borderline savvy

I'm ok and flying :)

2006-11-18T05:03:00.000-07:00

Over the past two months, I was sick for 6 weeks -- extremely sick-- and it came at a time when my employer put me on one insanely unrealistic deadline after another. Because I couldn't work very much, I got behind, and my boss let me know that I was being perceived as "struggling" and "incompetent." Although I had missed a lot of days due to illness, and had even gone to the hospital, had doctors' notes, that didn't matter. All that mattered to my boss was that I had missed my deadlines. Now, the whole department -- individually -- is being raked over the coals because they too are "incompetent" and miss deadlines. It's ludicrous. But at least I don't feel as alone.

The positive side is that I have been flying more in the last week or two, and my instructor thinks I'm ready to solo! Another very positive thing is that Ken, my flight instructor, is very cute and single. We are becoming friends at work and at the airport. It would sure be nice if he decided to kiss me...

This week I had down time at work after I finished a project. I studied for ground school, but still failed the test dramatically: I probably only got 50% of the questions right. I've always been a top student, so I was devastated that my understanding was so poor. Yes, I was very sick during ground school and missed a lot of days there, too. But the poor results struck another blow at my fragile self-esteem. Then many of the pilots I know came to me and told me about the time they had failed ground school altogether the first time, or failed their FAA written exam, or failed the FAA practical portion of the checkride (couldn't do anything right in the air). After that, and a lot of encouragement by Ken, I got over my discouragement and picked myself up to study for the final in a week and a half.

But the bottom line is that I've discovered something I enjoy doing more than writing: flying. I never knew I would love it this much. Each week I wait impatiently until I get to go up again.

It's the middle of the night. I've got to go back to bed.

I hope everyone is doing well. I'm not suicidal at all, totally not interested in hurting myself, am not depressed (certainly discouraged at work, though; but I'm even springing back from that), and am getting my health back.

Now if I could just find a guy that I like who would also like me back...

At one point, my boss told me that "Flying is not important and ground school is not important." Because flying is the only fun, positive, and self-esteem promoting thing that I am doing these days, I came home and burst into tears. I later told Ken about it, and he got mad. He's told a bunch of important people in the company about that. You see, I work for an aviation company that writes training materials for pilots. It only makes sense that the writers learn a lot about aviation and learn to fly. Even the president thinks that way. But not my department manager.

depression and incompetence

2006-09-23T13:40:00.000-06:00

So I'm depressed. It may be because I have weaned myself off Prozac, and now am reducing Wellbutrin. I hope it's just normal depression, because I really don't want to stay on so many drugs.

At work I am feeling absolutely incompetent as a writer. On my current project, they have assigned another person to do some of the writing. I'm not off of it, but the other guy will be doing some of my work. They don't think I can complete all the writing by the deadline. I have been sick with a flu/bad cold and missed a couple of days at work. But I should be writing faster.

I keep feeling like I'm going to lose my job. I don't know if this is a valid concern or not. I used to think that I was doing better than the other writer that was hired at the same time as me, but now I'm not so sure.

I'm going on a business trip to Portland Oregon starting tomorrow and will be gone five days. I'm still somewhat sick. I hate traveling while I'm sick. There is always the chance that I will get worse because of the stress. But I can't get out of it. The other guy from our company that is going wants to show me the bars in Portland, but I think I'm just going to go back to the hotel.

I'm thinking about taking the total amount of Wellbutrin that I was prescribed.

Got to go do laundry and go grocery shopping for the trip.

A borderline-- an optimist?

2006-09-10T17:30:00.000-06:00

My life is generally going well. I am coping with work adequately. I am flying well and thoroughly enjoying it. I even do spins (from a very high altitude, not suicidal!).

But I'm still grieving over Frank. I look for his emails many times a day. I am obsessed with hearing from him even though "we" decided to be friends. He and I are going to go to a concert with John Mayer and Sheryl Crow next week--as friends. And I am going to pay to have him go up in a glider plane for his birthday, whenever I can get ahold of the glider club.

All seems to be going well. Yet today I am depressed. I am still managing to get some things done, like doing my laundry and studying for flight school and ground school, but I have this constant heaviness in my chest.

I have taken myself off of Prozac, but I don't think that is the cause. I think that I am depressed because I am still attached to Frank, miss him, and can't have him.

I have been studying books about optimism and how optimists think, and I really want to convert my thinking patterns to a more possitive, healthy outlook. Frank is an optimist, and he is a very attractive person because of it. Optimists, according to the study I've done, have a sense of control over their emotions, a resiliency that they know they will spring back after difficult times, and difficult times will be shorter and less severe than pessimists. They are healthier, live longer, and happier than most people. And it isn't because they were hard wired that way. Apparently, you can gradually change your outlook on life. It takes practice, sometimes even "faking it until you make it." But it can be done.

I look into the mirror and see lines forming on my face. I'm going to be 50 next year -- not an attractive age for women, especially women who want to find a mate. I worry that I won't be able to attract men. Except that I did attract Frank at first. I think that I am much healthier now, and could be in a much healthier relationship. I'm ready to be truly in love with someone. My first marriage was abusive and contributed to my deep depression. My second marriage was all about the worst of my depression, which eventually drove him away. Not that I blame him.

I don't want to bring my borderline personality into another relationship.

I think I am depressed in part because I see myself as a failure in another relationship, and have a sense of hopelessness -- classical attitudes/signs of pessimism. An optimist would say, "He chose not to have me. It's his fault, not my failure. I know I can find a man who will return my affections."

So the question is: How do I get there from here? I want to believe that statement that it's not my failure, and that I can find a man who will love me.

Are there any optimists out there who can comment?

I mean, shouldn't I be grateful for the recovery that I've had from deep depression, finding and holding a very good job, and learning to fly? How can I see myself as lucky, instead of as defeated?

I mean, if I compare myself with the 9/11 victims or their families, I am extremely well off. Or the tragic people in Darfour. Or even other people in my DBT group. I have been called "a poster child of DBT."

So how do I get myself out of the victim mentality, the defeated mentality, the pessimistic mentality?

All I know to do is to try to change my thinking, go ahead and take another step forward, and hope that I will see results.

Afraid of the job but not of flying

2006-08-28T13:15:00.000-06:00

Frank with the wolves at the wolf sanctuary. Me in the background.

I am panicked because my job is very hard. They want an enormous amount of work done in a very short time period, and I don't think that I can do it. The other writer feels the same way. They keep changing things up on us, and yet still expect us to meet the original deadline. I am trying to cope with this, but I keep thinking: "I'm going to get fired." I don't know if I will or not. I guess probably not. But it doesn't make the stress go away. I am still taking Xanax, which I have to quit in order to take the FAA's pilot physical and be able to pass the drug test. But it's not going to help at work if I freak out, either. I'm having to choose surviving for the short term over surviving for the long term. It sucks. I tend to get tunnel vision when I am panicking and can't see anything else but the fear. Then I lock up and am not able to work. I stayed home today for the cable guy to come in, but I haven't heard from him. He was supposed to have been here already. I was going to go into work this afternoon, but it's looking like I'm not going to make it.

But flying is going well. I seem to have a knack for it. The instructor said I was the most fearless student he's ever had. I love doing steep turns. Yesterday, he put us into a spin, and I loved it. He said that he's going to have to stop babying me, because I'm not scared like the others. I also nearly did a zero G move on my own (where everything in the cabin floats in the air). He thinks I will love doing aerobatics, and I think he's right. At least something is going well.

I called Frank while he was in Texas on his birthday last week, and he seemed genuinely happy to hear from me. Then, after he drove 15-16 hours back home, I called him on Saturday to make sure he arrived safely. I think he likes having someone concerned about him. But now that his brother is moving to town, that duty will pass from me. We still email back and forth. He seems to want to keep me as a good friend, too. I'm glad, even though I'm still disappointed that it is not going to be something more.

On Saturday, I cancelled a first-time date with Dave because my cold was still lingering. We are making plans on getting together this weekend, though he wants to talk closer to the end of the week.

I went to Great Expectations to see if I wanted to join their dating service. It is really expensive. But all the people there are looking for marriage, so that weeds out quite a few. They also do background checks on everyone, which is nice. If you have a criminal record, then they don't accept you. But a big part of me says that I shouldn't join until I get over Frank. I will probably be comparing every guy to him, and that's not fair for anybody. The woman from GE is hounding me on the phone, continuously making better offers to try to get me to decide to join now. I have been ducking her phone calls. She obviously really wants her commission. I think that a part of me wants to join now so that I can get over Frank by replacing him with another. I guess that would work, although I'm not sure it is the healthiest way to do it. It would be a distraction, but I doubt if I would be as open as I would normally be since I'm still getting over Frank. The whole premise of GE is that you are encouraged to not settle for the person that you bump in to, only to find yourself in love with someone who is not compatible. So they encourage people to continue dating until the chemistry finds you. I don't know if I'm up for dating so many people. Some women apparently juggle several --up to ten--guys at the same time. I couldn't do that. I wish I could just be content again to be alone.

It's just that Frank and I started out so well. Then he lost interest, though I wasn't following his lead. I still was nuts about him. It took me quite a while to get over John, so I wouldn't be surprised if it takes me a long time to get over Frank.

In the meantime, I will start ground school in another week, and that and work should keep me very busy.

Since the cable company hasn't called yet, I may not go into work today. I don't want to have to miss another day of work by staying home for something so dumb as a cable guy. I guess it's better to completely trash one day, than to do it again and again.

What is a borderline doing with a full-time job anyway? I just don't know if I'm going to be able to handle this stress. At least the other writer is having the same problems.

Guess I'll go back and try to work at least a little while from home.

Are there any other borderlines or other people who are having a hard time coping with a job and the symptoms?

SU with Frank and other negativities

2006-08-20T18:21:00.000-06:00

Me at the wolf sanctuary getting kissed by one of the wolves. Yes, they are wild.

Couldn't get logged onto blogger.com. So my posts are a little behind.

Last week, I woke up in the middle of the night convinced that I knew what broke Frank and me up. I thought I had lied to him, and he knew it, and so backed away. So I wrote a despairing middle of the night email, which included references to flying a plane into the ground. The next morning, I wrote to him and told him not to read that email, but it was too late. I told him that it was a nightmare, but who's going to forget suicidal behavior in your former girlfriend? I go see my T on Tuesday, and will have to discuss that one. One of my friends thinks that I'm unconsciously pushing men away, but I don't think so. If anything, I think I was trying to CONNECT with Frank by letting him know my true feelings. Well, I know that I was emotional during that time and didn't make a very good decision. I should have called the hotline instead.

But now, I don't know, but I think this has driven a permanent wedge between Frank and me. Polar Bear thinks that I mind read Frank too much. Maybe I do.

Something else I've noticed is that I'm attracted to men who see the glass as half full rather than half empty. And yet, I view it as half empty. I really think this is coming up for me to work on. That negative, dark attitude has been around a very long time. How am I supposed to attract positive men when I myself am not positive? I've become so much more aware of it now. I'd like to see the cup half full. There are many positive things going on in my life. I have a good new job that pays well, and I'm getting compliments on my work. Now all I need to do is to change my attitude. And I bet that will attract positive men like flies.

I've been thinking about what the odds are that I will find a man that I am so attracted to and mesh well with in so many ways. Frank is going to be a tough act to follow. Will I settle for a "nice guy" that I don't fall in love with? It's possible. It's happened in the past. At least now I know that what type of guy I go for: they either have a computer or mathematical background, and have an interest in flying or Emergency Medical stuff. They are generally very positive and stable. At least I am attracted to the "right" type of person--positive and stable. Now I just need to have the ability to maintain a positive and stable relationship. That's a big order for a BPD.

Does a negative outlook on life go hand and hand with BPD? Is it essentially part of the Dx? Or can I change it? I hope I can change it. The question then becomes how. And I guess the old adage is that you first become aware of the problem before you can change it.

This weekend I came down with a cold and essentially stayed in bed the whole time, except when I was ordering really bad pizza. (Dominoes makes the worst pizza I've ever had in my life.) And that was good for me. I busted a gut trying to make a deadline this week (and actually made it), so I came into the weekend sick and tired. It has really been therapeutic for me to burrough for a while. I've been healing in the dark.

I hope I can get to sleep early tonight. Woke up late, so I don't know if that will happen.

I've been attracted to and "in love" with two men this year: John and Frank. I guess that shows that attractive men are out there. I guess that's positive. John was unavailable as a married man, and though Frank was available, he was available only as often as he wanted to be, which was once every 2-3 weeks. Not a good thing on a relationship.

I am tentatively planning to go to Great Expectations (a large dating company). I suppose I will renew my membership to eHarmony. I think the connections they find between people ares good ones. It's not the same thing as Jungian matching. It has more to do with energy level, things of shared interest, similar or compatible politics and religious beliefs, and many others. Great Expectations records a video of you answering three questions that you've chosen ahead of time. Then they let you view other members' videos, and decide if you like them and want to meet them. It's a different approach to dating than eHaromony. They accept only people who are looking for a permanent relationship, so that narrows the field down quite a bit. Although I doubt if someone who is looking for casual relationships would go to eHarmony.

I didn't fly today because I wasn't feeling well. But I am wondering if part of my desire to fly has to do with Frank (he's a helicopter pilot). I know in the past, I have taken up many new areas of interest due to first being introduced by a lover. I just hope it's a permanent desire (to fly), because I am spending a hell of a lot of money learning to do it. It will benefit my job, of course, so I'm sure that I will continue until I have my Private Pilot's license.

Life is getting restructured without Frank. I'm going to have someone take him up in a sailplane, and hopefully let him fly it a bit. It will be a nice birthday present for Frank. The question is, should I spend that kind of money on an outgoing boyfriend (although an inbound friend)?

THE PHOTO IS OF ME AT THE WOLF SANCTUARY.

Frank took me, naturally. I wanted to touch him, hold his hand, caress him, etc. the whole time. I finally told him I was still attracted to him, and his reaction was that he was willing to give the idea of us becoming just friends more time. He truly is not attracted to me anymore. He's in Texas this week, which is good. I can still email him, but I'm going to try not to. I need to unplug the umbilical cord from him. I hope I can maintain him as a friend, but that's all up to me, now.

It's hard to realize that there might be someone else who comes down the road that I will be as attracted to, but I guess it's a possibility. Especially if I continue with eHarmony and Great Expectations.

I've just got to keep my cup half full.

Foggy brain

2006-08-11T17:26:00.000-06:00

I'm exhausted from a very long and tiring work week. I notice that I am getting tired about 2 hours before I leave. Then things seem difficult, as if I can't see my way. It's like being in a fog. But my brain just won't function. And I get very indecisive. That's going to get me into a lot of trouble. I'm racking up writing hours without doing any writing. They will pay attention to their statistics and notice that I am slow.

When I was on Effexor and the devil drug, Zyprexa, my mind was always in a fog and my memory severely limited. Now that I'm off those and Lexapro, my brain has come back to me. But I'm wondering if the foggy brain that I'm having is meds-related, or just natural.

Does anyone else get so tired during the day that they become non-functional? And is it BPD related? I don't remember being at a full time job and becoming this tired in the late afternoon. I remember being foggy, but for long periods of time, when I was a book editor. Sometimes I used to take a 15 minute nap at work during the middle of the day.

Or is it age? I'm 49 now. I've got to find a remedy for it.

My sleeping is not very good. I ended up taking something to put me to sleep last night--one of the meds that will show up on a drug test weeks later. So the more trouble I have sleeping, probably the longer it will be until I get my FAA physical and drug test. My regular MD has put me on Neurotonin. One of the side effects of it is to make you sleep at night. Also, it supposedly calms anxiety. She's ramping me up quickly on it, which is good. But I don't know if it is going to be effective in putting me to sleep at night or not. Seroquel might do it. But I don't know if it shows up as a flagged drug or not. I know that several of you have used Seroquel. Does it work for putting you to sleep? And do you have a hangover the next morning? Can't have any drugs that last a long time.

I am flying now (will go out again on Sunday with a different flight instructor) and so with that, and with needing to be fully brain functional all day at work, I have to be careful what I take. That's why the med that I take now is so good. It's a benzodiazapam type, but it doesn't seem to have hangover effects. Except, of course, that it stays in the body for weeks afterward.

I don't take my Ritalin very regularly any more. It's possible, I suppose, that ADD is causing me to lose focus. But that doesn't explain the afternoon syndrome.

Tomorrow morning early, I leave for Frank's apartment. It will be the first time I've seen him since I made the decision not to let myself be in love with him. But I wonder what I'll do if I find him attractive and want to go to bed with him? Will it be safe emotionally? I am still hoping that I've come to terms with him not loving me. I suppose it is dangerous to go be with him, but I really want to keep him as a friend at least. Now you know he's got to be something special for me to still allow myself to be around him. Maybe he won't be attracted to me. If that's the case, then it's a pretty safe bet that we can remain friends. If he is attracted to me, that will be a lot more complex. But there is a big part of me that is hoping he still finds me desirable.

I know, I know. I'm playing with fire. But my alternative is to either to not date, or to turn to another dating service. If Frank stays my friend, I may not date. But if we can't be friends, I still want a companion. So it would be very risky emotionally to start dating.

The dating service that I'm looking into only accepts people who are looking for a marriage. That clears out all the Franks in the world. The service video tapes you answering some pre-chosen questions. And from that you are supposed to give people an idea of who you are and what you are like. Then you go through the men's videos and if you find one attractive, you let him know. Maybe he'll be interested, maybe not. But at least you know that he is looking for a permanent love. I don't know if this method of matching people up works very well or not. They say that 1 in 7 of their members gets married because of the service. I have an interview scheduled with them on Monday afternoon. I don't know if I'll keep it or not.

Time to relax. I wish I could go to sleep early. But I doubt that my mind is going to let me do that.

And so the drama continues...

Clarifications

2006-08-08T16:32:00.000-06:00

So I emailed Jerry, and he said that we just weren't the right fit. Oh well. That had to be the quickest date I ever had.

But I got an email from Frank, who wants to see me this weekend. I don't know if I'll spend the night or not, but at least we will get to go see wolves in a wolf sanctuary, have coffee, then have breakfast. His school is starting, so I know he will be busy. But that's ok. I'll get to see him.

His birthday is on the 24th, and I've decided to give him a sailplane (glider) flight as a gift. He's a helicopter pilot and has been up in a sailplane once, but would like to get back into it. He doesn't celebrate birthdays, but with any luck, I won't give him the chance to turn me down. Then in the first part of September my ground school starts, then in October, grad school starts. So I should be considerably busier. And hopefully not thinking about Frank as much.

I will see my T tomorrow early afternoon. At last. We can talk about the situation with Frank and see if it is something that I can accept for what it is, or not. I hope he and I continue to have occasional sex, but realize he might not be open to that. I just don't think I'm going to find someone I'm better matched to than him. I'm going to pull out of eHarmony. There's not going to be time to date anyone with school coming up anyway. And the only one I want to see is Frank.

I guess I just wasn't prepared for the reality of what calling it off with him would mean.

I think my sister thinks that things could progress over time if I would just relax and stop pushing. Maybe so. We can be companions. We're good companions.

I think that my reg. md may have found a solution to Xanax -- Neurontin. It should help me sleep, too, though not very strongly. I just have to get past my flight medical exam. They're not real sure how Neurontin works, but it is supposed to relieve pain and anxiety and cause you to be sleepy. It also doesn't metabolize in the body, and so won't show up on a drug test.

The crisis hotline suggested that I call my doctor and explain everything to her and what my goals were with the FAA. So I did. And the woman also suggested that I make an appointment with my T, which I have (it's tomorrow). My boss even told me to take the afternoon off WITHOUT working. That will be tough for me. I have to find a way to keep busy. Work isn't enough. Maybe I'll finally get off my lazy butt and start exercising and be able to go skiing with Frank. I know he'd like that very much. So he wants to be with me, just not as much as I want to be with him. I'm the only one who can decide if that's ok or not. He is just such a fabulous man, such a good fit, that it seems crazy to pass the opportunity by to continue to see him, even if it is not as much as I want.

What part of this is compulsive neediness on my part, and what part of it is realistically wanting someone who wants me as much as I want them? Neediness seems to be a big part. Radical Acceptance like in DBT would be so helpful. Just accept things the way they are.

I have a long way to go to come to peace with my heart. Maybe I tried to artificially end it too soon with Frank by demanding that he see me more. He's not scared off. That part is unbelievable.

My son is moving out August 24th, and that will be both a big relief, and a lonely thing. I need my space. I just need to get back to doing some of the things that I used to do, like watch more movies and read. I listen to music, but it reminds me of my heart breaking. I am having trouble concentrating at work. Again, it's Frank.

Is it possible to grow in love over time if one of us stops being so pressuring? (me, of course). Or am I wasting my time? He's such a good man, I can't believe it would be wasting my time. At this point it certainly seems worth the risk, and I am definitely a risk taker. I think I am an overachiever, at least right now, because I'm trying to avoid my feelings of pain. But I think it would be better if I just cried. I need to have a good cry to get in touch with my pain and stop pushing it away.

At least I know he cares about me as a special friend. We're just going to have to define what "special" means.

Frank and Jerry

2006-08-07T18:33:00.000-06:00

Well, I had my little datelet with Jerry. He had already started a beer before I arrived. The waitress came over to take my order, and asked if we would be eating. Jerry said no. When the waitress asked if I wanted another drink, Jerry said no, and that he had to get back to the office. He had had a terrible day witnessing a good friend be fired, so I know he was under a lot of stress. He hugged me goodbye and said "keep in touch." Yeah, right. If he wants to keep in touch, he can. I thought about giving him a call later and just clarifying that he didn't want to see me again. It must have been a wierd first date for him with the heartbreaking news of his friend, then trying to get to know someone in a light hearted way.

But the reality is that I miss Frank. I sobbed yesterday over him. I want to get back together with him, but don't know any way other than seeing him occasionally. The thing is, I am going to be going to ground school pretty soon, then graduate school, and I'm not going to have time to make any new boyfriends. And I don't want any more. I want Frank. I've taken two Xanax, and maybe will take a percocet. I called the hotline and they weren't much help. They said read my DBT book. At least the counselor that I talked to after hours yesterday suggested that I contact my doctor about meds, and that I contact my T for an appointment, and I've done both.

I want so much to be with him again. And then the rejection of this new guy Jerry didn't help. I was hoping to have him at least as a transitional relationship. Now that graduate school is coming up again, and that flight school is coming up, I just don't see how I'll have any time for a social life, and I really want to have one. I've lived alone long enough, especially if you count the years I lived alone at the end of my last marriage.

I don't know if I'll go back to graduate school or not. But it would certainly keep me busy, and I wouldn't have time to think if I was lonely.

Loving someone who doesn't return your love is agony. I know you can't make him love me. And I don't want to put the pressure on him to feel like he has to behave in a certain way.

Maybe Jerry was just having a bad day. It sounds like a very bad day. But I still think it's fair to know if he wants to see me again. That seems only right. None of this ambivilant "keep in touch" shit.

I have take 2 Xanax and some percocet to cope with the pain. It's making me very sleepy, and sleep is a very good escape.

The only way to find a love is to keep putting your heart out there, hoping to find someone. That takes a lot of guts. But i really do want to find somebody with a caring heart. I want that more than casual interest.

I think I'll call Jerry instead of Frank and clarify things. I'd just as soon not hope for Jerry if there is nothing there.

Flying under the clouds

2006-08-05T18:50:00.000-06:00

Today I had my first official flight lesson in a Cessna 172. It went well, even though I tended to zigzag during taxiing. Instead of asking to do something daring, I concentrated on learning the airplane. We flew at 7500 feet (2500 meters) and above the lower mountains, but the clouds lingered above us.

And I guess that's how I'm living. I landed successfully (actually had help). Maybe I need help landing from Frank. I called him after my flight and told him about it. It was a stupid idea to think that I could be "just friends" with him--or at least so quickly after we broke up. I miss him. I'm going to miss him. I tried to call J., but he wasn't in, so I left a message. The airplane that I am writing about at work has a parachute built into it so that you can pull it in case of emergency. I wonder if J. will be my parachute from Frank? I don't want to louse things up with J just because of Frank. I want there to be a real possibility.

Love really hurts. I think I better jump back into the air again, or I'll stay stuck on the ground. I keep thinking that if I was lucky at work, maybe I can be lucky and find a mate who will love me back. Why is it so difficult to find someone to love and who loves you back?

I'm not cutting, but I am using. So I'm not coping in a healthy way. But I am coping in my own way. Dare I hope for lightening to strike twice? It can kill, you know.

I'm completely off of Abilify. Fucking anti-psychotic. I hope that's a good thing. I'm so sick of taking pills, and yet, that's exactly what I turn to in times of stress. Feeling the pain of life? Take a pill. Works for a while. But I have to take a drug test in less than 48 hours, so I have to be smart about it. Or at least try to control my urges. It's so hard when things aren't going well. When things were going well with work and Frank, I wasn't using at all. So that's all it takes. A perfect life. I wasn't lonely before Frank. I was happy. Sort of lonely, but mostly happy.

All you have to do is keep yourself in the air without crashing. No more impossible than that.

Broke up with F. -- :( Love sucks

2006-08-04T16:38:00.000-06:00

It turns out that F. was too busy to see me this weekend. He had to wash his two cars, then go on a hike and think. That just didn't work for me. Plus, he was only seeing me once every 2-3 weekends, and the total time was getting shorter.

He was a gentleman about it, I'll give him that. He said it was absolutely nothing I did and had everything to do with how his feelings, which looked like they were there, turned out not to be. The longest he's been in a relationship is 5 years anyway. So though he was generous, it still hurt like hell. And I was the one calling it off. Or I should say, he was going to call it off a couple of weeks ago, but I convinced him to give it a little more time. But I did the actual breaking up. And he agreed that it was the right decision.

So why am I feeling so extremely hurt? I hadn't fallen in love with him, though I had fallen in like with him. I made the mistake of writing my feelings on paper. He started many letters in return, but tore them up. They were going to be dear Jane letters.

It's just that we were so perfect for each other in so many ways. The same interests, the same books, the same politics, both of us vegetarians, similar spiritual views, great physically matched. It all should have been there, and it was, except for his interest.

We are going to try to remain friends. He said that finding people that you can talk to you are rare events. He even wants to still go flying with me when I get my pilot's license. And he wants to hear about my first flight tomorrow morning. I don't know if I'm up to that. And he said that he often was a catalyst for relationships that formed soon after someone had been with him. There is actually a guy that I'm talking to most seriously on eHarmony (that's how I met Frank). And this new guy and I are going out for a couple of drinks on Monday after work. We've already had very honest, intimate, practical conversations. He's looking for his LAST relationship. So am I. He was the one who was in a relationship with the other person losing interest, just like me.

It was because I could see the writing on the wall with Frank, and because I wanted to give this new opportunity guy a clean shake that I broke up with Frank now. Frank still wants to talk a couple of times a week. And he said that he couldn't keep up a physical relationship with me and be honest emotionally with himself.

Love and life are hard and can be very painful. Sometimes I wonder if it's worth it. But I really do want to find a mate. Not second best, but a mate that is truly good for me, complementary to me. J. is an accountant, and I am a disaster financially. So that would help. And he certainly seems sincere in his interests.

What about work? It was hard to concentrate because of breaking up with Frank. I told a couple of friends at work -- guys -- and they said that Frank was stupid and were just generally very supportive of me, and told me I was brave to have broken it off with F. That helped a little. You can't make someone have feelings for you when they don't, and I guess that is DBT Radical Acceptance.

It doesn't hurt any less, even if it was the right thing to do. A guy like Frank is one in a billion. But he's not the last fish in the sea. I've been pretty impressed with the quality of relationships that eHarmony has turned up. So I guess I'll stay with them a while longer--at least until I start ground school, and possibly as late as wehn my new graduate quarter starts in October. I won't have much time for relationships then. But maybe this new one will have gotten a good start.

And this new guy lives MUCH closer, and has similar eary work hours as I do.

My new P-nurse (not very good) cut me off of all of Abilify. Yeah! No more anti-psychotics. Ane she's cutting down on the prozac since I already take Wellbutrin. I really don't like this P-nurse. She's not very good at prescribing. I may go back to my regular doctor from here on out. Getting off of Prozac should be pretty easy, except it might cause more anxiety.

But my dogs love me, And I've gotten great responses from you guys. I really appreciate it. And my friends have been very supportive too. One ste at a time. I'm going to go distract myself with the news. Maybe J will call tonight. I emailed him a couple of long emails, but told him that since I was a writer and he wasn't, he shouldn't try to keep up with the sheer quantity of it. He likes to call and answer questions.

Wish me luck. I'm going to miss Frank in a big way.

Hard work week, nervous about F.

2006-07-28T17:12:00.000-06:00

My job is going full throttle with enormous deadlines. Very high pressure. I find myself taking Xanax again to get through the day.

I'm with F. now. I'm nervous about how it will go between us. A friend told me to drop him before he dropped me. If necessary, I could keep him as a boy toy for the sex. But F. hasn't ever been committed for more than 5 years, and he says he doesn't really see himself getting married again. He says he is open to other things happening, but I don't get an enthusiastic reception from him. Got a spontaneous first kiss, and that was nice. But I had to hold his hand. I feel like all the enormous pressure from work has simply followed me down here, and it's just a different type of pressure now. Do I measure up to some nebulous idea of his that we will click?

I'm trying to prepare myself for a dissolution, but I would really like to do things with him. I have to be realistic and acknowledge that he may be a commitment phobe. I plan to screw his brains out tonight and then see where we are after that. It's been two weeks since I've seen him. That's a long time to be apart in a developing relationship.

I believe that the collective power of people wishing the same thing can have a positive effect. So I hope you will picture F. and me in a good relationship. He's so cute, handsome, sexy, nice, a gentleman, intelligent, well-read, .... Everything I'm looking for at least.

Continue to pray, meditate, envision, ..., anything that you can do to send positive karma my way. I have a good, though high pressure job. I just want a good relationship too.

F, is being partly better, partly a jerk

2006-07-25T20:00:00.000-06:00

Ok, so the prayers and meditation worked--at least it has given me a reprieve for a few weeks. But F. is not wanting to get together for a full weekend. He tells me he has never had a relationship for more than 5 years, and that was only one. He did date someone for 7 years, but that was a wierd relationship. He seems to think we've got the physical chemistry and the things in common, but there is some nebulous sort of chemistry that hasn't "clicked" yet for him. He compares it to knowing when you like one painting really well over another. But I am of the opinion that love takes time to grow, especially at our age. F. is a terrific guy in many, many ways. But he does not call me very often, and when I wait to call him, he says the chemistry isn't there.

I've been talking to my T who says maybe he isn't the one for me, that maybe he won't be there for me when the stresses come into my life like they have lately for work and with my son home. She thinks maybe F. won't be there for me when the going gets tough. He's very independent, but he has had a bad relationship with his mother and with his wife. He was thinking that maybe adventure was the way for him, and not love.

I'm beginning to get back a little of my balance after being thrown off and into a tail spin. I'm thinking more about whether HE's good enough for ME. We certainly are compatible in the bedroom. And he loves to fly and I'm learning to fly. We read the same books, both fiction and non-fiction. We have the same politics, and very similar religious philosophies. All in all a good fit, except for this hesitance I feel from him.

And how do I feel about him? At first I was completely gung ho, but now that he is shortening the time and lengthening the frequency that we are together, I'm not feeling very wanted by him. At times, that crushes me, and at times I think, to hell with him.

I am using my DBT skills. I used DEAR MAN as a way of having a conversation with him about his feelings, and it worked very well. And I am using self-soothing and breathing to comfort myself. But because of the stress at work too, and the severe insomnia, I am taking percocet again. Not good. It's not the best coping mechanism, and I had eliminated it altogether. I'm just having big stressors in my life right now.

I have cut way down on the antipsychotic I am taking, and plan to cut down on Prozac too. I'll probably still take Wellbutrin, at least for a while.

But I'm lucky. I have a good, full time, permanent job as a writer about airplanes, which means I have to learn to fly (oh darn). I'm glad I'm more positive at the moment. Frank certainly brings out the anxiety in me. And there's lots of stress at work. But I'm up to it.

So thanks to all who went to a higher power for me. I appreciate it, and think that I have at least received more time --for both of us.

To all who can pray, meditate, offer merit,....

2006-07-24T04:45:00.000-06:00

I need help.

F. and I have been doing very well -- until, that is, my son moved home with me. So F. has basically told me that he would like to keep me as a friend, a very good friend, and that no, he is not seeing someone else. He thinks that if there were a chance for him to develop a love, it would have been with me, but now he thinks only adventure is left for him.

I need the deepest prayers of you all. He is too good to let slip by. I am having severe insomnia. and thoughts of self harm. Please let him not break up with me.

My job is difficult but basically good. But how in the world can you survive without love?

Please, I need everyone's prayers or supplications on this. I take refuge in the Buddha, the Dharma, and the Sangha. Please don't let this opportunity slip by. Please, no.

How the world turns

2006-06-25T20:23:00.000-06:00

So I had a date with F, and it was DYNAMITE!!! Definitely going to see this guy again. He seems too good to be true. It's as if I have been picking guys that had problems all the time before because I didn't think I deserved a great guy. So I'm pushing my boundaries, and going out with a intelligent, handsome, successful, honest gentleman who frowns SEVERLY on cheating.

It seems everything is going so well. A new job, a new guy, a (alas!) requirement that I have to learn to fly (how cool is that???)... All so well. But my son (21 going on 22) is being sent home from the Buddhist monastery where he has been dedicated to becoming a monk. So he is going to be staying with me in my TINY little studio apartment for a couple of months. It is extremely tiny here. He'll have to sleep at the foot of my bed on the couch. So there will be no privacy. And in the past, we didn't get along very well. He can be very stubborn, to put it nicely. There has been a great deal of conflict between us in the past. But the abbot of the monastery assures me that my son has changed enormously since last I saw him.

Time for bed. Wish me luck when my son comes tomorrow.

Jobs and guys

2006-06-17T19:29:00.000-06:00

At last I seem to be settling down a bit about my new job. On Thursday, the human resources woman reconfirmed that they would be making me an offer, but that it probably would be Monday or Tuesday before they could get back to me. With reminders that there is always a learning curve on any job, and that I KNOW how to write and edit, it seems to be a little more manageable. I'm still concerned about how I'm going to cut loose and see my T and my pdoc. But I figure maybe I can go in early, skip lunch, or something in order to cut out early. So my panic level is way down.

Now I have two guys on my tail, one of which is good news, the other is sad news. The sad news is that the one guy, I'll call him D, is really falling fast for me. He's handsome, brilliant, kind, compassionate, considerate--everything you could ask for in a guy. He's even done a lot of therapy and does something called Co-Counseling, which is peer-to-peer counseling. BUT, he broke his neck in a hangliding accident 20 years ago, and is paralyzed from the chest down. I gave him a kiss one day, which he turned into quite a passionate one, and he began to fall in love with me. That was on the first date! The long and the short of it is: I thought that as an EMT and having married a guy with a disability before, that I could handle him being in a wheelchair. But one day, he said, "I guess we could always meditate together instead of sex." That got me to thinking. I just can't give up sex. I would like to be selfless enough to say that I could, but I'm afraid I'd end up having an affair. So it seems like the only choice is to tell him when I see him tomorrow that I just can't handle it, that I thought I could, but I can't. It would be so much more cruel to let it go on, letting him become more and more attached with me, only to break it off down the road. And he's sad. He cries a lot. Now I've done plenty of crying in my life and there is nothing wrong with it. It's essential. But I'm ready to laugh in life. I've done my crying. I'm ready to be happy. But god it's going to be hard to face him and tell him that. It just seems like a chicken way out to tell him on the phone. But I'm still even considering that. If he can, I'd like to still be his friend, although I think some time would have to go by before we saw each other again. So that is something I'm dreading. My T said that I should be honest with him about how I'm really feeling. And Polar said that what I feel is what I feel and there's nothing wrong with it, or something to that effect. It's just so painful to turn down someone so special because of a disability. What a lousy reason!

In the meantime, I have met a guy online, F, that almost seems too good to be true. He's a computer network engineer and a former helicopter pilot. He lives about an hour or so away from me. But we talked last night and hit it off really well. We had several email exchanges that were quite good. So now we have a date planned to go to the Museum of Natural History and see the current exhibit which is supposed to be spectacular. And he is also brilliant, handsome, sensitive, etc. etc. But he is able bodied. And there is certainly some chemistry going on here. And unlike other pilots I've known, he's been alone for the last couple of years. And he's also getting his master's degree, just like I am. And for my job I may have to learn to fly, which gives us more in common. Plus he was an EMT like I am, although he rarely practiced. He flew in the Coast Guard for 10 years, then privately. Then went into computers "for love." He couldn't continue his marriage flying 2 weeks on and 2 weeks off. So he gave up his passion for a marriage that didn't last.

At any rate, I want to pursue F because I feel like we're peers. We have more in common, not to mention a MUTUAL attraction.

But that doesn't make telling D that we can't be a couple any easier.

Love is so complicated and painful, regardless of the side of the fence you're on. So why do we want it so?

At least I'm in between courses. That would be all I need to go over the edge.

Bright future, hurting scars

2006-06-12T10:31:00.000-06:00

I just heard today that I got a REAL job, one with benefits and everything. They are going to make me an offer by the end of the week.

I should be ecstatic, but I'm not. I don't know if it is shock, or what. I haven't had a permanent job in probably 10 years. I'll be writing and editing and possibly doing some instructional design. And I may need to learn to fly because I will be working on a program for commercial pilot training. I will have to use the on staff pilots as resident experts, and I hear that they do not like writers trying to write something about flying without knowing how to do it. The only real problem with flying, which I would be happy to do, is that I don't think I can pass the FAA medical exam because of all my meds and my diagnosis. The only way I think I could pass is if I tell them I haven't seen a doctor in years and that I'm healthy. In other words, lie.

And morally, I know that lying is wrong. In Buddhism, you are always supposed to speak the truth.

I'm actually feeling depressed. Why would that be? I need to call my T and see what she has to say. Maybe it is because I will be leaving an easy life for a hard one, regardless of the salary. I don't know how I'm going to finish school. It will be a heavy load to work on brain-draining stuff and then come home and study.

I feel like they are going to find out the truth about me, that I'm all bullshit, and then fire me. And I also feel like I'm going to be owned by a corporation.

So why am I not happy? I'm going to have financial security back in my life, and I will be providing it for me, not depending on a man for help. I know they were impressed with me, but I'm scared they are going to find out that I'm borderline. What if they find out? I'm only on a ton of meds.

I don't have enough professional clothes, although they are pretty casual over there. On Friday, I saw a woman wearing jeans and men in very casual shirts and pants. But I am either in the jeans category or the professional category, with nothing really in between to wear. Like this matters.

I may even be able to save up for a down payment on a house now. So the future looks bright. Why in the hell am I down??? And I dropped my class, so I basically have nothing to do until I start. So I could be studying for the position. Or I could be cleaning my house. But I'm scared to death. I don't know if I will be able to handle the position or not.

At least I don't feel like cutting. This job may mean that I won't be able to see my T any more, because she's with a low income program, and I will be making too much money.

My pdoc has started pulling me off one of my meds. I wonder if I'll be able to continue that or not?

I need to go meditate or read my DBT book.

Drowning. Need help!

2006-06-04T14:13:00.000-06:00

I keep repeatedly "stabbing" myself with an invisible knife in the chest -- all because I dropped the graduate course when it was almost over. I just can't take failure. I am such a loser. I don't know why I couldn't complete it. I was having trouble concentrating because of my meds, but that doesn't seem like enough reason. I was having no support or guidance from my professor, but that doesn't seem like enough, either. It will mean I will have an extra quarter to take before my master's is over. There just wasn't enough structure for me, even though I don't need that much, but still that isn't enough of a reason not to condemn myself. I should have done it. I need to figure out why I couldn't do it. It was a PhD independent study course, and I'm just a Master's student, but I should have been able to do it. Maybe my motivation to finish school is waning.

And jobs are disappearing, and I've bought work clothes, and now I don't have anyplace to wear them, except at my temp job. How am I going to make it? My life is swimming down the sink hole. I'm caught in a whirlpool undertow and am drowning. Nothing is going well for me.

I need to go get groceries, wash clothes and get ready for work bright and early tomorrow morning. Maybe the structure of the day will help me. I will be grading math for standardized tests. That should keep me intellectually occupied.

But all I feel like doing at home is watching movies or tv. And there is nothing on tv. I am just in a slump. I don't want to study. But I do need my Master's to get a job. I'm trying to get everything from writing/editing to technical writing to instructional design, but all I'm getting is temporary work. All the people who called me with leads have since found out that the company is restructuring the job, or that they didn't call back because of my lack of qualifications.

I am afraid that I'm going to end up on the street.

Fear, pain, and more fear, and guilt. I should have done better with my life. I looked like such a promising student. BPD has gotten in the way, as well as severe major depression. I just have trouble snapping out of moods like this, and have trouble doing what needs to be done in my life. It's like I freeze, like a wild animal in the headlights of a car.

No contact with anyone. Feel so all alone and defeated. Can't even find a guy that I want to date. Failure, failure, failure. I'm supposed to let the negative feelings pass through me without judgement. Easier said than done. And I'm not practicing meditation, so I do not have my faith to rely upon.

I alternate between placing my hands in a prayerful position (in gassho in Buddhist terms) and thrusting that invisible knife in my chest.

I need help. I won't see my T for another 12 days. I could talk to her if my phone had reception in the area that I worked, and if I had more time for personal calls. But I don't. I feel on my own and like I'm drowning in a turbulent sea. Maybe it wouldn't be so bad to drown.

Dropping like flies

2006-06-03T13:55:00.000-06:00

I am making a couple of difficult decisions.

One is that I am considering dropping my current class. I am way too far behind, and though I'm passed the dropping point where I can avoid an F, my advisor will say that I was trying to drop before that and put it as a dropped Withdrawing. It will have no affect on my GPA. It's an independent study at a PhD level, and while I love the topic, I just can't seem to handle the fact that I'm getting absolutely NO guidance whatsoever from the professor. I feel tired, like I need to rest. Dropping it would mean that I would have to take one more course to get my Master's, and so mean 3 left plus the thesis. I just don't think I can finish this, though. I don't know what's wrong with me. It really isn't an important course for my degree; it's an elective that was interesting. And ALL the classes I take next, regardless of how many there are, will be deliberately the easiest I can take and still get through with my degree. There is a slim possibility that because of the difficulty that I have had concentrating because of the drug interactions, or because of one drug in particular, that I could receive my tuition money credited toward another course. All it would take would be a doctor's letter.

It is so difficult for me to accept what appears to be defeat, but I just think that a class with no structure or guidance from a professor is just too much for me, at least right now. I really thought I could do it.

And another potential drop: The guy that is the big flirt is starting to get on my nerves with all his sexual innuendo without a balance of any intellectual, professional, and/or personal background to balance it. I mean, it's been years since I've been with a guy, and it would be nice, but I want some depth there. Besides, I think he is too Catholic for me. My last husband was a non-practicing Catholic, and I could good-naturedly tease him about being a "Catholic boy" when he went too far in the guilt/sin direction. But with this guy, I'm afraid that I would offend him with my religious jokes (I joke about Buddhism too). And there is something about all the guilt/sin/shame that makes sex kinky instead of beautiful and open. I'm not into kinky sex. I'm into passionate in-the-now sex. But in a relationship that goes beyond skin deep.

I want to find an intellectual liberal that meets my needs and vice versa. I have emailed a guy who fits the bill. He is an electrical engineer. The only problem is that he wants children, and I don't know if I can handle it. He's in a wheelchair, (a hang gliding accident 20 years ago) but that doesn't bother me. He's romantically capable. He's very handsome and adventuresome, and 7 years my junior. He's currently dating somebody for two weeks. I told him I didn't want to be the cause of their breakup. But he said that if I was willing, that he'd still like to continue a conversation with me. He finds me beautiful and intriguing. The last thing I need, though, is a repeat of falling for a "taken" man. (Shades of John.)

I'm depressed. I feel like I have nothing to offer a guy. I don't have a booming career, I'm the world's WORST housekeeper, I have BPD, my doctor says that I'm not ovulating any more, although I truly don't know if I want kids or not. I know I'm impatient about a relationship, but it feels like I'm ready for one now. (A healthy, fun, intellectual one.)

And jobs are coming my way, then disappearing into the mist. That's a lot of rejection. I guess the only healthy thing is that I am rejecting guys that truly don't seem good for me. I'm also being rejected by others.

I don't know why I'm down. Maybe I'll work on my DBT book. My T and I started to go through the Emotional Regulation section privately, since it doesn't seem that I'm going to get an opportunity to go through that class with others.

Such is life.

Am I crazy? I'm talking with a man I've never met.

2006-05-31T23:49:00.000-06:00

So I only "met" this man on Match.com yesterday, and today we must have talked on the phone five times. And now he is flirting with me in a pretty serious way. He makes me laugh. But he mentioned in passing having a "break down" 10 years ago. I guess in some ways I'm relieved. It will make it easier to talk about my BPD when the time comes. Or maybe he was joking. I'll find out soon enough.

But I haven't been with a man physically in years. I feel flattered by his attentions, and he's a Catholic btw, so it is pretty tame flirting. Which brings up a point. I have been attracted to several Catholic men over the years; married one of them. But I HAVEN'T EVEN MET THE GUY YET. He seems very honest, from what I can pick up through our lengthy conversations, and from what he professes.

I'm not getting any schoolwork done, but then, I haven't been getting anything done for weeks and weeks anyway. I'm just so unmotivated to get this project done. And this guy is a nice, light-hearted distraction. I let him know that I needed to be studying tomorrow, though. Now we'll just see if I do it.

He asked me if I liked --either cuddling or to be touched, I can't remember which, but that led me to spontaneously say that it had been so long I couldn't remember when I was last held. That seemed to take him aback. And it sort of startled me that I was so open. It's just that it has been a long time, and I can't remember what it felt like. It sounded a little sad to me. I guess I was feeling sadness and compassion for myself --like, oh, that's too bad for her, meaning me.

I want to be cautious with this guy. He also sounds like the sort of guy that falls in love easily. And that unnerves me a little bit. I don't know if I can fall in love again. I don't know if I should ALLOW myself to fall in love again.

How fucked up can one life be?

2006-05-30T19:13:00.001-06:00

Ok, I know this is going to sound stupid. I'm in graduate school, and I'm currently drowning in the course I'm in. I'm looking for a job which is a full time job in itself. I need to prepare for interviews on subjects that i took in grad school but that I was on too many FUCKING meds that gave me amnesia to remember what I previously learned. My son (this is good news) has been accepted into the Buddhist monastery in SE of Seattle, where he'll be safe. But this and other things have been making me consider moving to the Seattle area, or at least the west coast. And now, since I have been an Emergency Medical Technician for 12 years, it's time to renew and I need my continuing education hours. And I don't want to give it up. So when am I going to fit that little fucking thing in? But I don't want to lose it. I've worked too hard to get it and to maintain it. And if I move to Washington, I want to have the certification.

But how many times can you divide a person into pieces? I feel like cutting again, but I won't. I just have the compulsion.

Oh, and then just to make it interesting, I went on a date with a handsome, funny, brilliant, man but with extremely WEIRD, complex, convoluted mystical beliefs that include people from Venus running the world. The first part of the date was hilarious, the second grueling as we went into detail about his beliefes for HOURS. Now I don't have a problem with other people's beliefs: they're welcome to believe whatever they want to believe. But sometimes ANYONE of ANY spiritual belief can go way overboard. He didn't even kiss me goodnight. But he did tell me he had a problem with commitment. At that point, I was thinking, no problem here. But hell, it was nice to be out with a man and on a date. It's the first date I've had in years. But what the hell was I doing on a date when I'm so swamped that I'm thinking about cutting?

Is there a doctor in the house?

Burned out, flunking out of school, & lonely

2006-05-27T16:14:00.000-06:00

I don't know what is wrong with me. I just can't seem to concentrate on studying. I should have never taken this independent study course, even if it is an interesting topic. It's just too hard for me. The professor will give me an extension, but I don't tend to finish classes with extensions.

I'm concentrating my energy now on two things: finding a job, and recently, signing up for online dating services. But the job search has been by far the biggest time consumer. I really need a job badly. And it's turning out to be more difficult than I thought. It's so time consuming! Like a job in itself. And meantime, I just don't give a shit about school. I'm so close to the end though. Finish this class, then 2 more structured classes, then the applied thesis. I'm trying to go into industry, but all my studying has been in the academic end, and employers are picky about that.

And I'm looking into internet dating because I'm tired of coming home and not being able to tell someone how my day went. I miss a companion. I'm not desperate or anything. I don't feel like i have to have a partner. I am happy living alone. But I'm also lonely. I want a partner to share things with: life experiences, adventures, traveling, snuggling, how the day went. I look at the guys they match me with, and either they are too old (I look and feel young for my age), or they are triathletes looking for another triathlete. I'm not young anymore, and I do have a few too many pounds, but not excessively so. I'm within the normal weight range for my height and age, but that is not looking like a model.

I'm having thoughts of cutting, but not acting on them. Not even close. But it bugs me that they are there. I feel like a failure.

And I miss John. Damn him for choosing to stay in an abusive marriage. And I compare every possible "match" to him, and they end up lacking.

I guess I'm just depressed. Lots of rejections from jobs and from men and not doing well in school. I'm not supposed to feel depressed, damn it! I'm on enough meds to tranquilize an elephant. I call friends, and they're not home. Out doing something nice for the long weekend, no doubt.

Oh, and to top it off, I've gained EIGHT pounds. I don't know how. But I've got to lose them.

At least my dogs are loving to me. Maybe I should blow off the dating crap and just concentrate on school. As if I CAN concentrate on school.

My thanks, walking disasters, and fake recoveries

2006-05-22T22:27:00.000-06:00

If you read nothing else, please skim down to the bottom of the blog so that I can thank you.

Things are supposedly going well. I'm getting interest in me for contract positions in instructional design. But, using my usual word, I panic about the idea of interviewing. The meds erased much of my early learning in my master's degree, the part where I learned how to be an instructional designer. My T says that I should reread the books. But I'm having trouble focusing, especially on school work. NEVER, NEVER, NEVER take an independent study class. I need the structure, especially since going to school online isn't very structured to begin with.

My day job stopped, and I'm going downhill. I got back on eBay again. And I've been thinking about self-harm. I'm so disappointed because I was doing so well with work and school, and now I'm falling apart.

I had hoped that I was getting better, but now it seems like it was just a period when I was doing better. I haven't cut, at least. But I am self-medicating regularly with Percocet and Xanax. I had virtually eliminated both of them. But I'm still not well. DBT helped, but since I started the temporary work, I haven't been able to go back and finish the final sessions on Emotional Regulation. This is the second time I've had to miss it. And with my T cancelling my session last week when I really needed to see her, I'm feeling hopeless.

At least my son isn't living at home any more so he doesn't have to go through my ups and downs.

And of all the stupid things, I'm thinking seriously (I've already filled out the questionnaire) about joining eHarmony, the online dating service that matches you with people you might be potentially compatible with. And when am I going to squeeze this in? Am I bloody crazy? But I'm many of my friends are married, and I miss not having someone to come home to and say "this is how my day went," and then hear about their day. I don't have much time to date, but there is a part of me that doesn't want to put a lot of time into dating, anyway. I think I'll be much more picky. Like I want someone with an advanced degree, preferably a PhD or an MD, but I don't think a lawyer. And I want them to be kind, compassionate, considerate, and organized in ways that I'm not. Like a math professor. (Shades of John, I guess; but he seemed so perfect except for the TINY detail that he was married. Never doing that again.)

We've reduced one of my meds a little, in part because it was causing me to shake, but also because I think it might be interfering with my memory. I have to reread things again and again to get them. You can't do that on a job like an instructional designer.

And I want to finish my degree. I've found out some good news: There are some easier classes that I can take to finish out my program. I still have the applied thesis. And one of the classes is the theoretical basis of instructional design, so maybe it can be a good review for me. IF I get through this stupid term. I am very far behind.

I guess I'm disappointed that what looked like a permanent upswing was just temporary. Maybe if I get back working it will help. I need to be with people. Not being with people I can at last see is not doing me any good.

I feel like a fool. I post when I'm in despair, and don't post when I'm doing better. More like a hypocrit.

And I think I've lost, or am losing, my faith in Buddhism. It's been a very long time since i meditated.

Another day, another lack of accomplishing things, like studying for school, or for an interview. Or cleaning up my trashed apartment. I sometimes wish I had a touch of OCD so that I would be cleaner and neater. My apologies to all who suffer from OCD; I know it's not fun and can seriously hamper your lives. It's just that I'm totally disorganized. And the disaster area makes me overwhelmed. It just seems easier to try to totally ignore the mess than to actually clean up, which would probably take weeks. If I do get a job, I'm thinking about (gulp) having a maid come in and help me for a few days. I'm so disorganized, I don't even balance my check book. I don't keep a running total. I just write checks and keep asking the bank how much money I have in my account.

I'm a walking disaster.

Well, the meds are kicking in, so I'm getting sleepy. And i don't want to sleep in so that I can take the calls that come in, like one from the recruiter for this job that's opening up. I figure I have at least some chance of getting it because there are 5 slots available, plus an advanced position. So they are going to need everyone they can get their hands on. I guess that may include me, if I can just make it past the interview.

If you've read this far, I just want to say thank you to my online community who shares so much of my hope and pain. I wish I could say how much each of you means to me. You have been my lifeline when nobody else was there. Please know that I take your comments to heart and really, really appreciate them.

My degree may be useless--panicking!

2006-04-29T13:08:00.000-06:00

I am getting my Master's degree in Instructional Design for computer/web-based learning, but I just learned this morning from another Instructional Designer that the market for these jobs are rapidly drying up for various reasons. Now, after the one I'm taking now, I only have 3 more courses to take, but I'm running up my student loans something terrible. The woman I spoke with has been a professor as well as an instructional designer and is currently working low wage temporary jobs. My carpool rider is is a PhD with a Post Doc, and can't get a professional job, much less a university or even community college position, and he really wants to teach. So I'm really discouraged about finishing my degree. I will just owe more in student loans, and it may be a worthless piece of paper, other than just saying I have a Master's degree.

I am working at a job doing state test assessments for elementary and middle school students, which means I read, analyze, make a judgement call and sit in front of a computer screen all day, plus drive 120 miles round trip. So my brain is fried when I get home from work, and no matter how hard I try, I just can't get my brain to do anymore work. So I am WAY behind in school with a deadline tomorrow that probably is impossible to meet. I'm considering dropping the course. And I'm also considering dropping out of school. I am so close to finishing, though, and I can't help but think that a Master's degree might mean something out in the world. I've seen ads for Instructional Designers asking for a Master's degree.

It looks like I will go back to technical writing or some such, or bring in some extra income by reading and editing manuscripts for book publishers or packagers. That doesn't pay much. Although instructional design was a hot field and paid well when I started back to school, it is quickly being replaced by publishing companies who convert textbooks into online material.

I am faced with getting a useless degree, although having a Master's might put me ahead of someone who doesn't have a master's. I just don't know if it's financially worth it.

And as I am working a very brain-draining job (temporary), I come home at night and the last thing I want to do is read my books and articles or sit in front of a computer, which is what I do all day. I am just flat out tired and can't concentrate on studies except on weekends.

I am absolutely terror struck. I can always fall back on technical writing/editing (at least I hope so). But I'm 49 years old, living below the poverty level, don't have insurance or Social Security to fall back on.

When I started the degree, it was a hot field, but now it is drying up. I don't know what I'm going to do. I have been living off my student loans. But now I don't even know if I can finish this term, especially because the class I'm taking is independent study, which means I'm creating my own course plus doing the work for it. Stupid decision, that. I should have gone with a structured class. It wouldn't be nearly as much work.

I have been off of Xanax now for almost a month, until today. I was doing so well. My T says what I needed was a job and a vacation. But jobs at my age are getting hard to come by. I have low living expenses out of necessity. I need the student loans to live on, but I can't function working at this temporary job AND going to school. It's not just that I'm grades are slipping; it's that I don't seem to be able to do the work at all.

PLUS--MED issues. When I have been at work, I noticed that I am much slower than everyone else when I used to be very fast and quick at work, and I can't analyze and make judgements very well. I thought it was timidity, and it might be that, but my brain is in a fog. I'm taking Wellbutrin, Abilify, and Prozac. I'm going to talk to my p-doc about cutting down on the meds. I am stable now and do not have any thoughts of hurting myself. A friend of mine suggested that I might be medicated for a level when I was unstable, but now that I am stable, I don't need the power push of all those drugs. I hope she's right. It would give my liver a break too.

BOTTOM LINE: I don't know how I'm going to support myself. I'm just barely getting by as it is.

I might need to consider moving to a different part of the country, probably the west coast, but I don't know where. I'm not sure where the jobs are. I also might need to fall back on my technical writing skills, which would be fine. I just want a full time job. WITH benefits. I'm very worried that I will be retired and not only not have a house of my own, but also living in poverty. All this and I nearly have my Master's degree. Just 3 more courses after this one, but they will be tough, especially if I have a job that pays above minimum wage. I'm very unhappy in secretarial/administrative assistant positions. I feel under employed, and I work much harder with little reward. I really want a professional position, even if it pays the same as being an administrative assistant.

One thing good about all this is that I haven't been on eBay for 6 weeks or so, which is great.

Am I going to be in poverty all my life? And how am I going to meet a soul mate if I'm stuck at home?

Another possibility for income would be reading, assessing and content editing of books on the side. But I certainly couldn't be going to school while doing that and a full time job. And the pay is not that great, but everything adds up.

I don't know what to do about school. Should I stay in school and finish my Master's after so much work and good grades, or should I quit and look for writing/editing jobs? I can't talk to my school about this, because they are going to say "Of course our graduates are getting jobs." I have to keep my cell phone off at the job I am now, so it is hard to do anything like contact my school advisor, or contact potential employers for jobs.

I am discouraged, depressed, and scared. And what if my symptoms of BPD return?

Does anybody have any advice? I am desperate for it.

One last note, I have not been keeping up with others' blogs because of my insane schedule, but I do apologize. Just know that my thoughts are with you all, and I hope you are doing at least ok, if not well.

panicking on weekends; timid at work

2006-04-23T10:28:00.000-06:00

I am working 36 hours at grading student's state tests for reading comprehension. It takes me an hour commute each day. Because I sit in front of a computer and read all day, the last thing I want to do is to read or sit in front of the computer at night (in other words, do my school work). So I just jell out in front of the TV instead of studying. So I am getting way behind. That makes the weekends very panicky for me. The weekdays go by so fast that I don't have time to get nervous, and thus am not taking any anti-anxiety pills, except on the weekends, when I have my panic attacks. That's when I realize how much I have to do in school, and how little time left I have to do it in. But it is almost impossible for me to study at night. I guess I'll have to contact my professor.

Saw my T on Thursday, and she said it looks like what I needed was a job and a vacation. The vacation because it seemed to clean me out and I have let go of J. and the triangle with he and his wife, largely because he won't contact me., but also because I have no feelings left for him except a mild compassion. On the job I am so focused that I don't have time to get nervous. But it won't last forever. I doubt if it will last beyond this week, or maybe next. I don't know if I'll get called back or not for the next round of testing. But it costs so much in gas (120 mile round trip in a Jeep) that I don't know if it will be worthwhile for me to continue on or not.

I've noticed that I am the one at my table who is always asking other people what they think I should grade when the call is very close between two points. The other people either don't ask, or only rarely ask. I think I am both afraid of screwing up, and a perfectionist--I don't want to give it the wrong score. I've been trying to stop myself from asking so much and telling myself, "You figure it out! It's a judgement call." I try to think that the other people are making judgement calls, so I shouldn't be afraid, and I should go ahead and make the call. Either I'm right or I'm wrong. I just don't want to be wrong so much. I'm also afraid that if I make wrong calls I won't get called back for other scoring opportunities; yet if I ask all the time, I stand a chance of not getting called back anyway.

Why am I so timid??? I'm making A's in graduate school. I made A's in high school. Is there anything I can do to become less timid? I am concerned that after I get my degree, I won't be capable of leading a software design team. I'm afraid that I just don't have what it takes to be a leader, and so won't get hired. I haven't worked professionally in so long that I don't have references, so I don't know how I'd get a job. What do I say? Trust me? Or, I've been sick a long time but now I'm better, so hire me? That won't go over very well. If I do get hired, will I be so timid and uncertain that I won't be able to make decisions on the fly? I think that might happen. I have been so timid all my life that I have never been a good leader.

Are there any DBT skills that will help me with my timidity? Was it beaten into me by my step-father and his abuse? I can remember being much younger and being more confident. I'm certain he did a lot to damage my self-esteem. But what can I do to repair it? And in a hurry?

I am worried that I will run out of money. I made very little last year and was in the bottom 10% of taxes, but I don't qualify for social security.

Sorry for the lack of regular posts, but I have been out of town and working, and it seems that I don't have time for anything but school, and not even enough time for that. I appreciate all of you who have written and been so supportive. I really need it, and am grateful for it.

Back from CA, and lonely

2006-04-09T18:57:00.000-06:00

I had a wonderful trip to California (just north of Santa Barbara) and with my friends. She is a writer, so we talked shop a lot. He is an Emergency Helicopter Flight Nurse. He can save your life in a heartbeat. But the best part about it was relaxing on the beach and going whale watching. We saw Gray Whales.

And a surprise to me since I have said that I am happy living alone is how lonely I am now that I am back. I start a temporary job tomorrow, and there will be a lot of people to talk with there. But it makes me think about dating again. But with going to school (new quarter just started), working, and pretending to write a novel, I just don't see how I'll have the time.

I keep busy--doing taxes, starting my school reading, cleaning up my apartment, and preparing for work--a 1 1/2 to 2 hour commute.

But it comes down to me waiting to see if any of my friends are online, if anyone has emailed me, etc.

Plus I am worried about my ability to get hired in my graduate school area of expertise. I haven't worked in a long time in my field, and money is running low. I don't even know if I'm psychologically ready for a full time job.

Most of all, though, I'm lonely. Yet I'm an introvert, not an extrovert. I don't know how I can make new friends very easily. Good friends are hard to come by. I just hope that the friends who have patiently put up with my sporadic posting will continue to be my friends.

I'm trying to role with the feelings of depression and loneliness. I have a sign on my computer that says "It is a wave that will pass." This refers to any strong emotion. I just hope that I can tolerate the emotions.

another nightmare--scares me because they come true

2006-03-23T08:58:00.000-07:00

I had another nightmare last night about me having the reverse Midas touch: Instead of everything turning to gold, it all fell apart when I touched it. This woke me early and made a big impact on me.

Now for those of you who are not familiar with my dreams, a few months ago I dreamed that J. was never going to speak to me again. At the time, he said, "I can never imagine a circumstance underwhich that would happen." I made him promise that he would talk to me, and he did. And then a few months later, his wife intercepted his abity to chat with me by phone or by email. At one point, he said he would never doubt my dreams again.

I also dreamed, about 3 days before, about 9/11 happening in the first tower. I dreamed the exact floor number, the total number of floors, the fire happening and people having to rush to the roof, and the helicopters not being able to land. I told my then husband about it and some other people. So when 9/11 happened it was really spooky. My husband's friends said that they didn't want me dreaming about them. There was a lot of shock and surprise about my dream.

And I dreamed for years that my first husband would leave me for another woman, and not just leave me, but be smug about it, and it happened. Those dreams I told many, many people including therapists.

So when I wake up with a nightmare it shakes me up a little more than the average person. Not all of my nightmares come true, but a lot of them do. I say this and I DO NOT believe in the paranormal at all.

When I wake up with a nightmare like this one, the first thing I want is to tell someone and to find someone to comfort me. But there is no one to wake up to, to tell it to. So I blog it. I am afraid that I am not going to be successful despite going to graduate school and getting a 4.0 GPA. I have been unhirable because of my BPD and severe major depression in the past. But I can't just tell any one about my nightmares, because they either don't know my history with them, or just write them off as common nightmares. This one woke me after less than 5 hours sleep, and I usually sleep 7-10 hours, depending on the insomnia and how effective the sleeping pills are (not very, usually).

I tried calling J. at his office, because I know he'll take me seriously. But he wasn't there and I didn't leave a message.

I've had similar dreams to this one, that despite my best effort, everything falls apart and I am destitute. It could happen. Ask Polar Bear about my dreams. I don't claim to have anything special going on. I just have these dreams that come true, nightmares really, not good dreams.

And so I have to silently comfort myself, yet knowing it is dreams like this one which do come true. I have no references other than personal. I don't know what I'd say to a potential employer other than I have been going to graduate school, working part time, and writing a book. But that isn't very competitive in this market place.

I am sad and scared.

I talked to J.

2006-03-19T13:41:00.000-07:00

I talked to J. on Friday night. Just to hear his voice, despite his depression and dark mood, was thrilling to me. I have (knock on wood) not had any severe mood swings since talking with him. I found out that his wife is painting me as the evil temptress, but J. doesn't see me that way. I told him I wanted him to be happy. He said I always say that. But I quickly added that I want him to laugh, play his music, be a professor like he wants, do his research and write his book. He was quiet, and then said that it might be a long time before those come down the pike. I didn't tell him that I have been having severe mood swings. When I asked him how he was, he compared it to going through chemotherapy (which he has). When he asked me how I was, I was so happy to hear from him that I automatically said I was fine. It probably will be better on him not knowing how deep my despair has been. He said he hadn't given me a "swan song" and I replied, "does there have to be one?" In the end, he agreed to continue to get in touch with me, although it might be a "long time." Whatever that means.

A friend suggested that I was addicted to him. I find that a bit harsh. I think I am in love with him, but in a respectful way. The same friend suggested that I start dating on eHarmony, which I have done in the past, but with school, writing and now work coming up, I don't think I'll have the time. And my heart wouldn't really be into it any way. Seems like a waste of money right now.

I found out some good news in school. I've been struggling, and not doing good quality work, but the professsor said that if I quit now, the lowest I'd get is a B, and if I do my research paper, I could get an A. That's so hard to believe. This has been a tough semester for me. I don't feel like I deserve a B or an A. I've really been doing just minimal work--a C at best. I'm just lucky that I have an incredibly generous professor. This means that I might be able to continue to keep my 4.0 GPA. I could certainly use it when it comes to looking for jobs, because I haven't been working in my field, and so don't have the references.

But the best news is that the mood swings have dissapated. I felt SU on Friday before I talked to J. I'm trying to take my relationship with him as it is, which is that of a good friend to a good friend. It can't be more because he is married. I have to overcome my attachments to him and just let him be who he is, which may be married unhappily for the rest of his life. And that choice of his needs to be ok with me--not that it is ok that he is miserable, but ok that it is his choice as an adult to stay in the situation or not.

I'm pissed at my therapist because i tried to call her all day on Thursday and on Friday. Called and left messages when I was feeling SU, but ended up talking to the hotline staff. I even told them not to let her go without talking to me, but she left anyway. It was the first time I've felt like killing myself in a very, very long time. I think she should have been there for me. But circumstances worked out (talking with J.), and it's hard to hold a grudge, at least for me. I don't know if I surpress my anger, or if I just get tired and bored of being angry. I don't have a very good shortterm memory, so it's just hard for me to remember the circumstances which surrounded the incident. And if I can't remember the circumstances, it's hard to stay angry.

J. once talked to an older man about what the secret was to staying happily married, and the man replied, "A bad memory." I certainly think I have that. I just would like to find someone special to be with and to share things with. Hard to do since I'm a hermit. But maybe I will meet someone in this next job. I met someone in my last job, a professor of philosophy, but he has two bad hips and walks with a cane. I can't help but think that would not be a benefit in bed! Plus we share different racial heritages, and I've never dated anyone outside of my own heritage. Not that there is anything wrong with that. I just think that as many likenesses as possible would be more likely to make a good relationship. Plus he's kind of formal.

Oh well. Now I need to work on my paper for school. Yuk. I really don't want to. But I suppose I'll try.

Fuck broken hearts

2006-03-16T02:18:00.000-07:00

It's very late. I can't sleep. I'm fixated on cutting, so instead I've taken one of one kind of sleeping pill and two of another (which is really an anti-anxiety med to relax me). Once I get to sleep, it will be hard to wake up, and I'll need plenty of coffee in the morning.

But what survival mechanism does grief play? It is painful as hell. That's why I'm thinking about cutting, as a way out of this emotional agony. What great benefit did our ancestors get from feeling the seering jagged knife that is burning and ripping through my heart? Is it so I won't ever care again about anyone else? I don't see how that would benefit the survival of the species.

The pills are starting to kick in, so I guess I'll go to bed. But a broken heart sucks, you know? I wrote a poem about this, and i feel worse.

a poem

2006-03-16T00:49:00.000-07:00

Unrequited Love

A black hole in my heart
Sucks the life blood out of me
I grow drowsy as it drains.
To sleep perchance to dream
Of messages from the gods
Foretelling this slow death
Months before the vortex formed.
The star shone brightest
Just before it collapsed in on itself
Taking his balls
As a first ritual sacrifice
To the snake that lives within his heart
Filling it with the venom of her lies.
I dreamed a lovely dream of you;
Oh how I wish it had come true.
To cut or not to cut:
That is the question now.

PTSD or Unrequited Love?

2006-03-11T10:49:00.000-07:00

They are calling my mood swings PTSD, because of the link between J. and his spousal/family abuse, my first marriage with the abuse my ex spewed on me and then separately on my son, and the abuse I suffered through as a child. They think that now, at my age, I am finally grieving over these things.

Ok. Fair enough. I see the links.

But what about this--unrequited love. I stayed with my mother and abusive step-father instead of living with my grandparents because I wanted her love, which was not to be. I fell in love with an abusive man because his love was distant and hard to attain. And now there is a man whom I haven't seen in 25 years, who lives in a completely different state, who is married, albeit very unhappily and abusively: and I fall for him.

So I look up on the Internet about Unrequited Love and find out that there has been very little study of it by psychologists. Great. Shakespeare and Keats and other poets can write about it as a great theme, but psychologists don't find it important enough to study? So am I supposed to read the great books and watch DVDs about love until I get it? Maybe I just never had a model of what love is supposed to look like.

Maybe that's what I'm grieving. The fact that I fell in love with and married an abusive man who didn't love me in a truly loving way, the fact that my mother (and father) never offered me unconditional love, the fact that this man now is incapable of returning my love because he still hopes that his abusive wife will love and accept him for who he is. And what an irony. I used to fall for the "strong silent type," the loner (someone independent, I thought, of society's rules), and now I am falling for the victim/martyr. Like my mother. Like me. How sick is that?

Maybe I want to "fix" myself virtually by fixing a man who is very compassionate but who can't return my love. But can I really fix myself, or can I only grieve about spending so much of life without a loving partner. I made sure that in my second marriage he loved me, even though I didn't love him. I loved him, but I wasn't "in love" with him. And that marriage disintegrated, in friendly fashion, but with me loving him and him not loving me. Once again, unrequited.

Is this my fate? Or can I learn to fall in love with someone who is mutually loving? Am I getting too old to find a partner who will fall for me? I've loved someone much older, and married someone much younger. I really want someone my age who I can relate with. Do I get on the internet dating sites again and see if I can find someone to love? I am too busy with school, and work coming up, and my novel. But I am lonely. I need to come out of my hermit hole and meet people. At this work opportunity, which employs only those with at least Bachelor's degrees, maybe I'll find somebody. I found somebody at the last time I worked for these people, but I never got in touch with him. He was a philosophy professor. He wanted to go flying kites with me. He wanted to introduce me to a Buddhist friend of his. But he was crippled with arthritis in each hip. Now I am suffering from a 10 week old pain in my right hip that just won't go away, and hurts "only when I use it." Which is an improvement: it also used to hurt when I was just sitting. I figure that I sprained my hip. Sprains take a long time to recover from, much longer than a broken bone. But a friend of mine wondered if it was arthritis. At my age??? I'm ruling that out for now. At any rate, I don't think it would be too late to contact this philosophy professor. We're into different music. He's into jazz, and I'm in to rock (and classical). He lives in the heart of the city, and I live in the country. He and I are of different races, and that only bothers me because of the additional cultural differences that would play into a relationship. I am more concerned with his hip problems and the potential lack of physical intimacy that might pose.

But maybe I should give him a call. A real live, single, intelligent, fun man. He was in Viet Nam, and no, he doesn't want to talk about it. So I called him my philosopher/soldier.

Back to Unrequited Love: Am I going to have to grieve this as a loss in my life so that I can heal and go on, or am I grieving the Post Traumatic Stress Disorder of abuse?

My mood swings are quieting down. I was depressed last night, but not in the painful grieving state that I was in. I just wish that I would learn what I need to learn and move on, grow, get to a place where I am selecting someone with whom I have more in common and can love and be loved. At least with the philosopher I have a real human being. And he has balls, unlike my other professor/martyr.

So I just now put in a call to him to see if he wants to go fly kites. We'll see if I get a response.

We shall see what we shall see. I am willing to learn about Jazz, the truly American artform.

I don't want to abandon my friend, the statistics professor. I promised to be his forever friend. But until he comes out of the marriage, my efforts are wasted, aren't they?

So is it PTSD, or Unrequited Love? What do you think?

2006-03-06T13:09:00.000-07:00

grief, loneliness, and an ulcer

2006-03-06T12:20:00.000-07:00

I haven't heard from my friend, and I am depressed. I used to hear from him several times a day each day, and now nothing. Plus my ulcer has flared up again. I can drink max one cup of coffee per day, and that is painful.

But not as painful as not hearing from my friend. Is the impulsivity in Borderline Personality Disorder at play here? Or perhaps feeling abandoned? I hate it that I can't talk with him. We got so close. I don't want to stalk him. I just miss him, and feel the loss of the relationship.

I created another anonymous way for him to get in touch with me, and left a quick message on his machine at work with its location. But that was only last night, and he still hasn't gotten in touch with me.

I am lonely, sad, depressed, and full of anxiety, despite taking Xanax. I want to DO something to help the relationship get back on course, but there is nothing to do except wait, and I am terrible at waiting, especially when I don't know how long it will be that I will have to wait. I find it so difficult to concentrate on other things that I need to, like school and writing.

And I am going to start a temporary job April 7, so I don't have much time to write. I will simultaneously be taking another grad course. I don't think I'll have time to write. The job runs for almost 4 months. I need the money. And it will get me out and with other people, which will be nice. It's a very, very long way away. Probably an hour to and hour and a half commute. I am going to check into the bus service and see if I can commute by bus, providing I don't have to depart at 4:30 am for an 8 am job. Commuting by mass transit would give me a chance to write, or study, and would relieve wear and tear on my Jeep, which is getting older now.

I am using the Meditation Bell program to periodically briefly meditate throughout the day when the bell chimes on the computer. That seems to be helping some. But I'm lonely. I have been thinking about calling a guy I met the last time I worked at this place. He would like to go kite flying with me, which would be fun. The only problem is that he has such severe hip problems that he is going to have to have replacement surgery, which he is putting off until the surgical technique is simplified and has less recovery.

I guess loneliness by yourself is easier than loneliness in a relationship. Now THAT really hurts. But loneliness isn't fun any way you look at it. I do feel abandoned I guess. And yet it was a forced abandonment by somebody else. I'm not taking it very well today as I have on other days. I'm tired of living by myself as a hermit. I won't finish school probably until next March. Then with some luck, I will be able to get a professional job.

So why this depression when there is so much to look forward to? The abrupt end of a relationship for any reason is painful. I guess I am shifting back and forth between grieving and accepting. I wish grief weren't so complicated. And it is made worse by knowing that he is probably much more miserable and lonely than I am. I just wish I could help. It's so hard to "help" by just biding time as necessary.

aurora borealis and perseid meteor shower

2006-03-05T17:41:00.000-07:00

2006-03-04T13:39:00.000-07:00

I would like to return to my Buddhist roots....

wrote a letter of forgiveness

2006-03-04T12:28:00.000-07:00

I just can't stay angry, even if he did give his wife my phone number. He was doing the best he could under the circumstances. Maybe it wasn't very good, but I accept that, and I accept him. So I wrote him an email via his mom telling him that I forgave him, but more importantly, he needed to forgive himself. I'm sure he is being much harder on himself than anyone else is, including his wife.

And I talked about his good qualities which he seems to forget: he's kind, loving, brilliant, a great musician, sensitive, intuitive, a good human being, a great father, and so much more that his wife tells him that he's not.

I wrote to his mother, too. She wrote back that she understood how because he and I became so close that I developed feelings for him, and that what mattered was that I treated him like a human being. She's worried sick over him, as I have been. Probably will be later on today. But right now, I am at peace. I'll stick by my promise to be his forever friend, even if he decides to stay in an abusive marriage. So I put my feelings aside and think about what is good for him, how can I be compassionate to him... I put a message on his machine at work that I forgave him and that he needed to forgive himself and be good to himself. That's about all I can do for now. I told him that there were 3 emails waiting for him at his mother's house. Spring break is coming up soon, and his wife will go to London with the kids, and perhaps he will go over to his mother's house and pick up the emails. But even if he doesn't, he knows that someone cares for him.

There isn't enough caring and compassion in this world. So what if nothing can ever happen between us. He's a person with real feelings and in a bad situation, and a good friend would not abandon him. So I won't.

As several of you commented, I need to be focusing on myself, especially my school work, which I am way behind in. I'm just hoping I pass the course. It's just hard to focus when your heart is breaking for a friend who is in trouble. I have to accept that as reality, too.

Watched Elizabethtown last night. It was ok. I'm watching love stories. I happen to like Orlando Bloom, and he did a great job with his American accent. But the story wasn't a strong falling in love sort of movie which I need to watch in order to remember falling in love. It's been so long...

Maybe I am just afraid of feeling the feelings of falling in love because of my bad experience. Maybe I am avoiding them, even by watching these movies instead of writing.

I have this wonderful program that I got from James that strikes a meditation bell periodically--I have mine set to every hour, so that it brings me back to myself and I do a short meditation. Really cool. Check out his The Buddhist Blog.

Well, off to do my homework and straighten the apartment a bit. I'm glad that I can come to peace with John's actions and reactions. He's hurting himself, and his children, but that must be his karma right now. He's got to be the one to reach out for help. Help is there. So many of his friends and family are ready to support him if he'll just take a single step on his own. But that will be what that will be, and I need to attend to my own stuff.

I wish him peace and contentment and happiness. And in the meantime, I will seek those for myself.

anger just won't work now

2006-03-02T19:45:00.000-07:00

I found out that the married man I was interested in GAVE HIS WIFE my cell phone number. She didn't accidentally find it out, and he didn't forget to erase it from a screen. She badgered and cried and had a tantrum, and he gave it to her. When I found this from his mother I hit the roof (so did his mother). His mother says don't you know what to do with children who throw tantrums? You let them scream until they are hoarse and walk away. He gave his wife his password to his university email account, and doesn't have the balls to change it. He is completely giving in to her.

I'm no longer angry. I pity him. He is going to have to hit rock bottom before he can get to the place where he can ask for help, just like an alcoholic. If he would only make a single step on his own, there are tons of people there who are willing to help him out. He just won't or isn't able to make that step.

So another of my predictive dreams comes true. This one was that I'd never talk to him again. And now unless he gets out of his marriage and gets help, I won't talk to him again. It's too bad. He is such a sweet, funny, brilliant, intuitive, musical guy. And he is wasting it on a marriage where the wife is clearly and openly out for his money. She refuses to sleep in the same bedroom as he does. He wants to be a professor, and she wants him to make more money. But all that is neither here nor there now. I have never been a person to learn from others' mistakes. It always seems like I've got to make them for myself. Well I've learned about falling for married men the hard way.

It has broken my heart. And the ironic thing is that I didn't even get an affair out of it. (I'm just joking.) It was strictly jokes, and politics, and intellectual discussions, and discussions about family. That's it.

I have been in deep grief about the whole thing. I chose to get invested with him because he was an old friend who needed help, and I thought that the compassionate thing to do was to help him. He has a mental health Dx too, so we also had that in common. It was me who fell for him, not the other way around. So this is my doing here. I really thought that he was on his last leg in his marriage. But this shows you the power of marriage even when it is a classic abused/abuser relationship--with him as the abused this time around. I can relate to that too, but I got out of my abusive relationship. Oh did I mention we are friends from 30 years ago in high school and we have all that time to relate to.

It goes back to what my son said about the whole thing--if it works, it's ok, and if it doesn't work, it's ok (he's a Zen Buddhist). I just have to let the not working part be ok too.

I'm getting ready to be in love again after my revelation about my ex husband after watching The Notebook. The fear of falling in love with an abusive man has left me closed to falling in love. And then I'm writing my novel which has a love story in it, and I have to be able to access my feelings of falling in love all over again--minus the abuse. But now I see why I didn't "fall in love" with my second husband. I loved him, but I wasn't IN LOVE with him. And that marriage just disintegrated.

Maybe I'll try connecting with my faith again. I forgot the time, and wasn't able to go this evening. But I'll try again next week, and the week after, and so on, until I attend a meeting.

But in the meantime, I accept what John did (the phone number) as part of reality. He was probably doing the best he could do at the time. If I need to, I'll change my cell phone number. I don't think I'm going to need to, though.

I'll keep in touch with his mother. She'll tell me how things are going without hesitation. I hope she sticks to her guns and cuts off money from him and his family. Then the woman who is a financial whore will most likely get fed up on the lifestyle that they have to live on. At least that's what I hope happens for his sake. She really is poison for him. And that's regardless if anything happens between John and I in the future. Regardless, he needs to be in a healthier place with a healthier relationship, even if it's not me. I feel like saying "May he rest in peace" because it seems like he is almost dead. I do wish him well. Maybe my peace can come from that.

he contacted me--need a shoulder to cry on

2006-03-01T21:13:00.000-07:00

My friend returned the anonymous email and praised me for my cleverness. Then he said that email would be monitored too. And then he closed with what I always said to him about his circumstances: I am so sorry.

Now I don't know if he planned this, or if I'm being paranoid. Did he try to draw me into his dysfunctional world? Why can't he get out of the trap that he's in? He is so smart, surely somethings must have occurred to him. But I don't know if my friendship has just been rejected or not. I am sad. Wounds are being torn open again. My wound that I opened up about only truly being in love with my abusive ex-husband is being torn open yet again.

I'm feeling a little SU. A little SI. I hurt, I hurt, and I don't know what to do about it. By an indirect mailing route, I typed out my blog address, hoping that we could communicate that way. But there's no telling if he'll even try. And it could be a long time before he checks his PO Box to see if my note, not even a note, just my blog address, is there.

In the meantime, where does that leave me? Lost and alone and in pain. I can tell my therapist. She'd say move onto the next thing on my list of priorities. She'd say use DBT skills. But what I really want is a shoulder to cry on.

And in my lonely life, I don't even have that. I hurt so badly.

ethical dilemma--I secretly contacted my friend

2006-03-01T10:04:00.000-07:00

I don't know whether I am SUPPOSED to or not, but I emailed by friend under an anonymous name. I quoted all sorts of quotes about dreams coming true. He should recognize the anonymous name, and will certainly recognize some of the quotes that I quoted as quotes that we had quoted each other as well. I did not address it to him, just his office mailbox, and did not sign it. He is very bright. Let's just see if he gets it and will start returning the quotes. Barring signing that it is his "forever friend," he'll just have to figure it out. He's a genius, so he should be able to put 2 and 2 together.

Now if he writes back using this secret email address is another story.

I got another call from one of his marital relatives yesterday, and she was lying throughout the whole call, I know because I have talked to my friend's family. His "relatives" are spreading malicious gossip about him, and humiliating him. I finally decided that since I have caller ID on my cell phone (where they call me), I just won't answer calls coming from that number any more. It is very upsetting to me, and according to my T and my Group, there is no reason for me to have to listen to the calls. So to protect myself, I will not answer the phone again from the relative in question.

I have been grieving. Not depressed, but grieving, that a wonderful friendship should end so abruptly that there wasn't even a goodbye, and that it was ended by others, not my friend and I. My grief is deep, almost as deep as if a person had died. Iam not sleeping, even with sleeping pills. So should I stand by my friend in his hour of need, or should I abandon him to his fate that he has surely had a hand in making? Some of my counselors say yes, leave him alone, you are stalking him now. Other counselors say, if you were to cut off contact from him now, it would be a deep tragedy that he might never get over. I don't want to stalk him, and if he tells me to go to hell, I'll leave him alone. But I don't want to abandon him in this time of crisis either.

A lot of my quotes I sent him were about dreams and how they come true--sometimes for the worse, just as my dream has. Another was about how with marriage comes disaster (needles and pins, needles and pins...). I left it short, because I didn't want someone else to get who was sending quoted text. I have left phone messages on his machine at work, again without saying my name or his. And now this is the first time in text that I have tried to communicate with him by email.

My fear is that he is so humiliated that he won't reach out and ask for a friendship. The lies about him are spread far and wide, and no doubt in his company. So where is he going to go for comfort? He's an adult, he can make his own decisions, but I have been where he is and have been so distraught that I didn't know what to do. I crawled within myself, as he is no doubt crawling within himself.

I feel better today than yesterday. I see my T this afternoon, and we will discuss the whole thing. I'm just in an ethical dilemma: do I keep my promise to a friend to remain friends forever, or do I follow my T's advice that I break off all communication with him? I know she is concerned about me stalking him, and I am very conscious of that too. If I felt I was, I would quit, because I definitely don't want to be contacting him against his wishes. But he is not even contacting his family (whom he's close to), so he's in trouble. And what sort of friend would I be to abandon a friend in trouble?

A friend in need is a friend indeed.

no word from my friend--will i be stalking him?

2006-02-27T11:45:00.000-07:00

I haven't had a phonecall of an email from my friend. If I try to pursue getting some sort of explanation from him, am I stalking him?

My T says that it is time for Radical Acceptance, that he must be willingly playing a part in this, too. So Radical Acceptance would say that he is an adult, and I must accept his choices. But a part of me knows that he has been severely manipulated into this. And yet, he has a free will. He's not choosing to exercise it.

My heart is broken. I guess I can only treasure what I had from him, and leave it at that, unless sometime in the future he contacts me.

I just have such a hard time accepting that this is going to be final, when he promised it would not be. I was in an abusive relationship, and I know what it's like to be manipulated when you're under another person's psychological control. But I also know that he has got to make a stand for himself. And no one can make that except him.

Today I'm not SU or SI, just sad and distraught and anguished.

I dreamed this would happen about 6 weeks ago. I also had a dream 3 days before 9/11 of the first tower being crashed into, at the exact floor, in a building the same number of stories high, with people running up the fire escapes to the roof and not being able to go back down because of the heat, and the fact that the helicopters could not land on the roof. I told people about it ahead of time, and it freaked a lot of people out, including me and my husband, and the people he worked with. They all said that they hoped I didn't dream of them. And I dreamed that my first husband would leave me for another woman years and years (repeatedly) before it actually happened.

I don't believe in the paranormal, and I can't explain my dreams, but I know they happened. And now this.

Dare I be hopeful that he is just being cautious and will get in touch with me when he can? Or am I in denial?

My heart is broken. I want to try Radical Acceptance, except that it feels like I'm giving up on a friend in trouble. People didn't give up on me when I was in trouble. Where would I be if they had? Doesn't he deserve a faithful friend? What good is friendship if you promise not to give up on somebody, and then the worse happens? Do you give up on them? Or do you keep your promise? Is it foolish for me to hope that he gets in touch with me or at least his family? They are counting on me to not give up either. This is how all his friends have been run off. So Radical Acceptance, or keeping a promise to a good friend? Is this my karma? (I'm a Buddhist.)

2006-02-26T11:38:00.000-07:00

Some color for my friend, who I hope I will hear from soon.

a terrible thing is a broken heart

2006-02-25T01:24:00.000-07:00

Following my exposure of my heart to the real but misguided love of the past, within 24 hours something dreadful has happened so that I cannot communicate with a potential love of the future, against his and my wishes.

It seems just as my heart is breaking open from a long unhealed wound, it is being broken again by a new wound.

Am having SU and SI thoughts, but mostly SU. It isn't fair. I know, I know: Life isn't fair, but why does it have to be cruel on top of that? For 13 long years I have suffered with a frozen heart. Now the concrete around it has a big crack in it, and i can see that it is still beating, but it hurts from what I thought was long ago pain, but is becoming present day pain. And in addition, I have this shocking new pain and sorrow that I'm going to have to live with. Simultaneously. And it seems that the only one who gives a shit is my T. But she isn't available on weekends.

But it is all so terrible too, because i can't share it with anybody, even my blogger friends. So I'm feeling hurt and alone. Just lots and lots of pain. And no where to turn: not my friends, not my family. Probably only my T. I guess it is good that I have a good one.

Took some pills to knock me out. By the way, I dreamed several weeks ago that this was going to happen: not being able to communicate with my friend ever again. I'm tired of having fucking predictive dreams.
Now I will go to bed (it's 2 am) with my heart fully functioning--in pain and sadness.

cracking open my heart

2006-02-24T13:30:00.000-07:00

Last night I watched a very good movie called The Notebook. In case you haven't seen it, it is about the passionate love between a couple until they die. It is supposed to be a 3 hanky movie, but the film didn't make me cry. It was only afterward, when I started to remember the last time i was in love, that I began to sob. I have been divorced from my first husband for 13 years, and still have been angry with him because he was a terribly abusive son of a bitch. And I took it for 15 years because I kept thinking, if I just love him a little more, if I just give a little more... Well, I put myself into a pretzel for him and things only got worse. When he hit my son in the face leaving repeated handprints and a swollen face, that was my key to exit.

But the thing is, I LOVED him. And all this time I have been hiding my heart in concrete to protect it from being hurt again. Which meant that I wasn't in love with my second husband, who was a very nice man. I loved him, but wasn't IN LOVE with him, if you understand the difference. So, poor man, he got the dregs of my love. No wonder he stopped loving me at some point.

But I have been trying to write a love story in my book and have been having great difficulty. So I assigned myself the homework of watching love stories on DVD. I had no idea that what might have been blocking my ability to accesss feelings of falling in love (which I must have in order for the reader to feel it too) was my feelings for my first abusive husband. So I sobbed after the movie. I felt the feelings of loving him, despite what he did to me. And it was very, very painful. It makes me wonder if my depression has been keyed to that all these years. I hope maybe I'll be able to get off of my depression meds as I open up to that very old unhealed wound.

It was my misfortune that I fell in love with an abuser. And I haven't since wanted to admit that I fell in love with an abuser. But I did. And I loved him fiercely. It hasn't done me any favors to deny those feelings. I haven't been able to open up and truly love somebody since then.

I don't know where this is going. I just know that it is a good thing, and the breaking of the case around my heart needs to continue--in order that I may love again, that I may feel deeply again, that I may write with passion again, that maybe I'll be healed of my depression at least to some extent. And maybe it will help me take responsibility for my life and it's outcome. I was a passive doormat in my first marriage: An observer of events, but not an active part of choices in my life. Now I'm running out of money and need to realize that I am not loved, was loved by him in his own way, but at the same time abused... I need to take the reins of my life and take responsibility for the outcome, not just watch myself slide into poverty.

This has all been very painful, but as I've said, it's not over yet. I'm just beginning to crack open my heart.

How this ties into John I don't know. Maybe it is because I was starting to have feelings for him that triggered all this. I still will be his friend. But I'm asking for some support from him, too, in this thing that I am experiencing now. I don't know that he'll be able to give it or not. He has a lot on his plate. But I am asking, one friend to another.

I was madly in love with my abuser, and that is my experience of falling in love.

learning to accept the situation for what it is

2006-02-23T14:26:00.000-07:00

Thanks for all the comments. As of now, I am treating the relationship as one of an old but good friend helping another. I am very aware of his strong bond for his children, and since I have a son with whom I'm bonded strongly with, I know that that bond will be first regardless. So IF anything happened, it would have to be so that he has regular access to his kids. I would not even try to get in the way of that relationship, and would in fact encourage it.

At any rate, I wrote trying to encourage a very depressed man. I did it out of compassion. After several months of compassion, though, the love started to grow.

But this all may be moot. I promised him I will be a supportive friend, and that comes first, over any romance. This costs me dearly, but ethically, I think I'm bound to keep my promise of friendship and support. It would be abominable to me to simply drop the support because I all of a sudden have romantic feelings and want them returned "or else." I have to live with myself. I have even talked to him about if he wants to save his marriage...

But people came out of the woodworks to be nice to me when I went through divorce and times of marriage struggle. I feel that I owe the Universe to pass on the support I received.

So I guess I'm sort of taking a Zen-like approach to this: If a romantic relationship happens between us, then great; if a friendship only happens, then this is ok too.

This relationship started when an old friend of mine contacted me for the first time in 25 years. We immediately hit it off, and started contacting old friends, and then we started planning a reunion for us (not a high school reunion, but an old friends reunion). This guy and I hit it off because we are so much alike. And when I found out that he has manic and paranoid symptoms for which he is being treated, then I shared my Dx, and we became closer. Two old friends with mental health issues. The intimacy grew from there. I was once (for 15 years) in an abusive relationship, and know what it is like to have your spouse deliberately cut off your relationships with friends and family (which happened to me and to him). I know what it is like believing that there should be only one marriage and that it should be forever (like he does). So the personal connections just grew.

However, like I said, I take my responsibility to him to be his friend to be the first priority. So I'm setting aside my romantic feelings for now. That is hard, but it would be harder to try to live with myself if I cut off all contact with him now because of my romantic feelings. So the better choice between the two is to remain a supportive old friend and to put aside my romantic feelings. This is disappointing to me to say the least. It hurts. A lot. But he truly is a nice guy, and very much worth keeping as a friend. Who would I be if, when I was in an abusive relationship, I had not had dear friends who were supportive of me looking after myself and my son? Doesn't he deserve that much?

So he is married and may stay married. I don't know if he has it in him to divorce or not. So I have to live with his choices. It's my choice to stay and take the pain. And it is very painful. But in my heart, I am happy, because ethically, I know I've made the right decision.

If something develops down the road--only AFTER he would be divorced--I'll just have to see where I am with my feelings toward him. I strongly feel that he should take some time to live by himself if he does divorce. He has issues he needs to work out and needs to learn to be able to be happy living with himself.

It will be a challenge remaining in a Buddhist attitude toward this. But maybe this will be an encouragement for me to go back to my faith.

Thank you all for your support.

Stray dogs

2006-02-19T14:12:00.000-07:00

A friend of mine recently asked, regarding men, if I was in the habit of collecting stray dogs. My first husband was a loner, and turned out to be extremely abusive. My second husband was an outsider trying to fit in. He was nice, but we ended up simply not having anything in common. Now my heart is set on a married professor who is in a bad marriage (they don't live in the same rooms; he would move out except that it would kill him not to see his kids). He doesn't even live in the same state, but we have a lot in common. He is such a sweet guy that I don't think he has it in him to divorce his wife; she'd have to divorce him. She wants him for his money; even he admits that now, long after his friends have been telling him this. So she's waiting for him to get a high paying job other than being a professor, which can't support her $10,000 a month spending habits. I've known him since high school -- a long long time, but only recently reconnected with him. He's been my obsession, other than eBay, and I started out with writing him and talking to him on the phone as an act of compassion because I felt sorry for him.

But then the compassion somehow turned to love as we shared intimacies. Recently, I sent him a letter telling him how I feel. He responded that how could he answer that question until he had answered some of the others I had asked of him which were pertinent, like what was he going to do with his life? Was he going to stay married? Would he try to stay a professor like he loves? Or would he take a high paying job in industry? They really are fundamental questions, and he will answer them eventually, but only when he has figured out the answers to them.

Meanwhile, I am feeling like a fool, embarassed, despairing, SU, SI (although I have attempted neither of these last two), and depressed. Very depressed. And lonely. It is hard to concentrate to get anything done on my book or in my class. Yet time is just ticking away, and soon I will have to find some sort of work, and out will go either the grad degree or the book.

So do I collect stray dogs? At least it would make sense for me to fall for a guy who wasn't married. What an idiot I am.

I will try now to either work or study, but I don't have gleams of hope for success with either.

lost and forgotten--did it myself

2006-02-18T22:32:00.000-07:00

I shouldn't expect anyone to think that this is anything other than a dead blog. But I'll write to the ethernet I suppose. Exchanged emails online with John again. This time he said that how could he comment on potential hurtful ideas (oh this is going to suck, I know it) when he hadn't even replied to basic questions I have about what he's going to do in his life, his marriage, his work, and so on. He wanted to know how he was supposed to answer my quesstions. So I wrote back that he should just choose to answer them in whatever order. He doesn't know that I'm dying inside to at least know whether it's bad news or bad news. I'm too disbelieving that something good could happen to me in a relationship.

So I turned back on the friendly act again and behaved as if I hadn't told him how much he means to me. I called him "pal" and "friend" and TOTALLY eliminated the romantic aspect of anything. I always sign my letters to friends and family "Love, X" but I nearly didn't sign it that way for fear that it would remind him of my outburst about loving him in the last 24-36 hours. But I decided to just keep everything the same as before I told him.

I mean, I feel like he led me on to a certain extent. signing rarely, Love, John or xoxoxoxoxoxo. And he has serenaded me twice with the guitar and then with the piano. We have talked intimately about things like his relationship with his wife. All the while I was resisting believing it but falling in love anyway. So serenading, starting letters "my dearest" and intimate relationship talk...it all added up to something, at least in my mind.

Now I waffle between thoughts of suicide or cutting or distracting myself or of just plain grief. He hasn't said absolutely no, which is worse than if he had made it clear one way or the other. So I don't write, I can't sleep, I have lousy concentration, and I'm not doing any school work. At times I think that if I had shotgun shells I'd just finish things off.

I took some sleeping pills so that maybe tonight I could get some sleep and maybe write tomorrow. I can't kill myself. I bought a nice fountain pen on eBay and I'd like to write with itl

My son called again, and was once more comforting. I really love that kid (man). I played my guitar a little bit, but that reminds me of John since he asked me to start picking it up and playing again. So I don't know if John goes if my guitar will hang around or not.

Maybe if I start writing regularly and "advertise" that I'm back n others' blogs that I will get responses again.

I'm feeling like such a failure in my writing because I'm not accomplishing much. I've already published one novel with a major publisher TWELVE YEARS AGO, but I am having to overcome my doubt in myself because it has been so long.

Tell everyone you know that Borderlinesavvy is back, please.

doubt if anyone is listening any more

2006-02-17T11:24:00.000-07:00

I haven't been blogging because I've been too busy falling in love with a married man and exchanging emails with him. But now I think I've gone too far and told him that I love him. I am afraid that he will not respond at all or will respond negatively. He's married, but he and his wife live in separate bedrooms, and she doesn't love him at all. He was feeling very unattractive, and so I wrote back to him that he is a very handsome and desirable man. I'm feeling SU, and logically there's no reason to, but rejection will be very hard. And yet watching him feel alone and unloved was painful too.

I can't get in touch with anyone, even my therapist. I'm all alone. What a stupid ass I am for letting myself think that a great guy like that could love me. I don't know whether to to cut, to kill, to call into the hotline, or simply wait and suffer.

I'm having a hard time concentrating on either writing my book or doing my schoolwork. I'm afraid I went to far and will push him away. But what is done is done. And I have to live with the consequences. I just don't know if I can LIVE with the consequences.

I'm running out of money, and yet I still spend it. Stupid, stupid, stupid. I'm going to end up on the streets.

I'm impulsive with my feelings and impulsive with my money. I'm trying to remember the DBT skills that will help, but I am drawing a blank. Maybe distraction. I wish I could get in touch with my T, but all I get is her message machine.

Sorry that I haven't kept up with the blog. Lots going on, but not enough to ignore the blog.

I have come to a place where I am not so much of a perfectionist when it comes to making straight As in school. It sounds dumb, I know, but it is such a relief to just plan for making a B or C. A C in graduate school is like an F, so I am really relaxing my standards. I've never made an F. Some people think poor little goody two shoes. But I have expectations of myself, and if I don't live up to them, whatever they are, or in whatever part of life, I feel like I have to kill myself. And I'm concerned that I won't get a job even if I get my Master's. I'm feeling burned out on it, so I'm going to take an elective course that sounds fun next term. Then I'll only have 3 more classes, including the capstone course (instead of a thesis). It seems like forever, and I still won't have any experience.

I'm going to try my T again.

Time passes quickly when you're working

2005-11-20T12:36:00.000-07:00

I have been at my new "temp" job for two weeks now. It started out being pretty funny grading all those 5th grade essays from reading passages. The things some of them come up with are hilarious. But now I'm just sad that the quality is so poor, at least on the question that I have been working on. I hope this is not representative of the nation. If it is, boys and girls, we are in trouble.

Well I'm still on eBay, but am going to get my camera back, and thanks for the suggestions: I will try to sell some back on eBay and recoup the cost.

Since I last posted, my apartment flooded from an overflowing water tank (at least it was not sewage). They took out my furniture and ripped up the carpets and ripped out the pads. There were days of drying with heavy duty fans (that was fun--like living with a 747 on take off). So just last night, I got my furniture back, and instead of sitting on the floor (sometimes wet, but always cold and hard) to write my blog, I am now in an honest to goodness chair with my computer on a desk! I feel like I have returned to the 21st century. So now all I have to do is put everything back in the bookshelves, reconnect the rest of the computer equipment, and sort through the garbage I collected that I really don't need.

I haven't been writing. It's just been too painful on my back to sit hunched over a keyboard on the floor to be creative.

In general, though, I have been in pretty good shape, except for last night when I had some s. ideation and some thoughts of cutting. But just thoughts, no action. Still, I haven't felt that way in weeks, so it's a little disappointing, you know? There was enough time there when I was feeling good (about a month) that I began to think, maybe this is a cure. Maybe I really have graduated from DBT. But no, I haven't been practicing DBT.

One of the things that has been such a stress reliever for me (besides writing) is that I have found out that the Buddhist monastery that my son wants to join is seriously considering him, even with his Asperger's. The abbot has sent him to Montana to live with a lay community there and to learn how to become a good lay person before he tries to become a monk. Now honestly, I want grandchildren. But my primary responsibility is to my son's welfare, and I think this just might be the perfect place for him. He would be with people working on compassion and understanding, and so would be safe. I just don't think he can cut it in the world. And the abbot is very wise. My son must pass a series of accomplishments (I don't know what they all are, but one is that he has to hold down a job for a long while without getting fired or quitting in anger--that will be a challenge for him). He has a job now and a place of his own, and according to the abbot, whom I called to discuss Asperger's with, he is doing well--at least so far. The abbot asks my son to view the job as his spiritual path for now, and that he should be kind and help everyone to be safe and have fun (he is a ski lift operator). This plan for him for the next couple of years or so has relieved my mind. For the first time in his 22 years, there is somebody else looking out after him. I can go off duty. For those who don't know it, Asperger's is a high functioning form of autism where the kids speak like encyclopedias but don't have a clue how to read emotions, facial expressions, body language and other social cues. The mechanism just isn't there. Now the abbot is taking a spiritual view of all this, of course, but I hope he will give my son a fair shake, considering his disability. Asperger's is a particularly incidious syndrome because everyone assumes that since you can talk about anything and everything, you must be able to understand another person. But not true. He looks normal, but his condition is hidden and subtle. It's not like Tourrette's where there are some obvious indications.

There is just no way I can say the amount of relief I feel from him. I sincerely want him to do whatever he wants to do, including becoming a monk. And it would certainly be better than him living in a group home.

Has anyone ever had a child with some sort of special needs that you could never stop worrying about? It is a source of constant tension, even when they are "grown."

Sorry about the delay in blogging. Things have been pretty chaotic around here.

Reconnecting with old friends

2005-10-31T00:01:00.000-07:00

I wrote last time that I have reconnected with a friend that I have known for probably 25-30 years, and it's as if we just picked up where we left off. We're filling in the wholes gradually for all that time, and that has been an interesting process. Long and many emails are going back and forth on sometimes more than once a day basis. It just feels so good to be connected again with someone who has known me after being virtually friendless for so long.

And through this friend, I have begun to connect with another friend. And he is a special case. He is literally a genius, but apparently has paranoid schizophrenia. He's also been fighting leukemia. But there is some alienation taking place on his wife's part, who doesn't want him to have contact with his old friends. He is definitely paranoid, with a web site full of CIA references and cryptography and reverse speech and such. And he behaves in a paranoid way, but I'm not completely sure he is schizophrenic. I know people talk about him having a "melt down" several years ago, and he only recently completed his PhD. But I really miss him and his happiness and jokes and song writing and singing. He was such a warm, loving human being. I feel like a fool for letting him get away! Alas, if we were only smart when we were young. Yet we really are making a connection. I intend to tell him about my BPD. I already told him about my son who has a form of autism called Asperger's Syndrome. I want him to be able to reach out to his old friends, and to confide in me. So I wrote him that our conversations would be kept private, which they will. He has alreadly given me access to a lot of personal information on his private website, and it speaks of a wounded soul. He's married and has 2 kids with his wife and she had 3 kids from a previous marriage. The older ones are grown and gone. It is really selfish of me, but I wish I had had or could have a chance at him as a partner. Not that I'd want to split up a family at all. It's just that I really miss him and wish that I had been the one there for him when he had his "melt down." If wishes were fishes... Oh well, I can at least renew our friendship and enjoy the benefits of that. Besides, he lives in Houston, which has to have the worse climate on the planet. Think of going into a steam sauna with all your clothes on and staying there for hours. To all you Texans, I have lived in Houston and so have a right to my opinion. Colorado has a much better and drier climate.

Anyway, the writing is going pretty well. I have reached several conclusions. One is that by all this writing, I've found out who my main character is. Yea! Now I am building the plot as well as the background.

I've heard from the temp job and there is going to be an orientation meeting this week. I bet that it starts the following week. That will be a change for me. I'll have to stop writing late into the night and limit myself to evenings and weekends. But it can be done. I don't have much of a social life, except online, anyway, so this will be good for me to have a day job. Not to mention the money.

And woe is me! I have run up $1000 on eBay from buying--all things I don't need, and things that I should be doing without. And multiple things--3 silver rose rings, for example. I mean, how many rose rings does a person need? And how many fingers do I have? I refuse to walk around wearing all my rings at once. I hate that look. But they are put on a credit card and are on their way here, along with a ton of other stuff--Buddhist pendants and what not. Now how many Buddhist pendants do you need? How many can you wear on a given day? This compulsion is finally catching up to me, I think, and I am beginning to see the consequences, which is good. I need to see the consequences. I need to face the fact that I'm not making good financial decisions, and that I'm hurting myself badly.

Well, that's all for tonight.

A crazy jump into the air

2005-10-21T14:29:00.000-06:00

Hi, all. I'm back. This had been quite a challenging 3 weeks. I have struggled with cutting, even ran a knife over my arm, but didn't cut. My T thinks that is a big victory. I felt guilty for even trying. But it's true -- I didn't cut.

And now for the crazy part: I quit school for this semester and am working on writing my second novel. All of a sudden a compulsion came over me to write, write, write. I found I couldn't concentrate on school. And I'm just as bad off financially while going to school as compared to writing, so it really was my choice. It's just the first time in years that I've had an idea for a book, and I wanted to go for it. So after talking to my T and my friends and family, I withdrew from school and have been pounding away at the novel ever since. It is going very well. I wrote 80 pages in a week, which is phenominal. So obviously I was really prepared to write.

I have a full-time temporary job coming up for people with Bachelor's degrees to grade the reading/writing portion of State school assessment tests for kids from all age groups. I hope I can get one of the advanced positions that pays a little more. It's just for 6 weeks or so, but it's more than I'm making now. And I figure I can write an hour or so each evening, then all day on Saturday and Sunday.

In DBT we are going over Emotional Regulation, and I find it boring. I joined the group toward the end of the cycle when they were going over Distress Tolerance, which I found much more helpful than this has been so far. I don't know if I'll be able to stay in the group, anyway, because of the new job, and with the possibility of the job repeating. I know I want to stay with my T, but if I'm not in DBT I only get to see her once a month, unlike the twice a month we see each other now. The last time we spoke, we just reviewed a 6 month plan. And then I had to take off and get some free meds before they closed.

But I'm having trouble with buying on eBay again. Compulsive buying. In our 6 month plan, we are treating the compulsive buying as if it were a form of self-harm, which it is. I just hope that I can get past it. It has been going on for more years than I can remember; I just didn't associate it with being any more than a bad habit until DBT and BPD came along. It is certainly wreckless behavior. I hope my T and I can address it on Tuesday.

But the book is going well. I'm reading a book about Success Principles by Jack Canfield, and one of the first rules he mentions is that we are 100% responsible for our lives. We get situations that come up, but it is our reactions to them that determine the outcome. This has been a very helpful book to me. I am tired of being in poverty and not being successful. But in the meantime, the book's concepts have helped me to jump out on a limb and quit school and write my book. This will be my second published novel, by the way, though I have written other novels which got put into drawers. I'm certain that it's going to sell because I intend to make it a good, creative book.

My self-confidence has soared, and I'm working many hours a day on the book. When I'm not directly writing chapters, I'm pondering and writing background notes. I refuse to see that where I am now, in the middle, is a quagmire. I just haven't created the exciting middle yet. That's the spirit!

I don't know if I'll continue in DBT or not. At the center where I go, they completely eliminated the most core session -- that on mindfulness, which is the key to the whole program. Instead they cover it in one session at the start of the other sessions, and each time they cover it it is the same. So I feel that I'm missing a key part of DBT. Maybe I can get into a DBT group that covers mindfulness in a deep and thorough way.

I have been in continual contact with the friend from high school who found me after years of trying. She had no idea what my last name might be. As it turns out, when I got my first divorce, I changed my name back to my maiden name and have kept it ever since -- partly out of work issues, but partly because I just LIKE my name, and I don't want to change it again for anybody. That doesn't mean I don't respect guys who do want you to change your name to theirs. It's just that I've been there and done that, and don't want to change it anymore. Especially as a writer, you've got to keep your name.

So will I finish graduate school? I have no idea. If it was a choice between writing books for a living and doing Instructional Design for Online Learning, I think I'd choose the books. But I'm almost through with my degree, and I don't want to give up before I'm almost over. I'll cross that bridge in January when I see how far along in the book I am, and if I will have time to work on school as well as work full time. I figure I can only do two out of the three, and I have to take the job offering the real money. So that leaves writing and going to school. And if I don't take a class in January, I'll have to start paying back my student loans, which would suck. I'd really like my master's degree, but we'll see how the writing is going, if there's any interest in it, how good it is, etc. With my background as a book editor, I have an advantage that a lot of people don't have in that I have contacts in the industry, and I know what is expected from a manuscript. So my standards are pretty high. I would really like a nice advance against royalties, and in order to pull that off, I am going to have to do the finest writing I've ever done.

So if I can just keep from cutting myself and spending myself into povery and stay on track with the book, maybe good things will come of it. I told my sister I was taking a big risk. She said that I took a big risk when I moved back to Denver, so what else was new? I take risks. I just hope this one will pay off.

My apologies to everybody for not keeping up with the blog. I will try to do a better job of that.

Slices of depression

2005-10-01T20:18:00.000-06:00

Waves of depression sweep over me, knocking me off balance. I can't think, I can't read, I can't study, I can't watch tv. All because I talked to my ex-husband about taxes today (I have to send him the bill) and he told me that his girlfriend had now moved in with him, and that if I didn't want to talk to her I should call his cell phone.

It's not as if it's a surprise, and yet it shocks me anyway. Am I jealous of her? No, I don't think so. I'm jealous of him having a relationship and a good job and a house and I'm struggling to simply survive. But to have a steady relationship on top of the good job and house just seems unfair.

Damn it, life seems so unfair at times -- like all the time for me for the last few years. My life has been getting nothing but worse and worse. What am I fucking doing wrong? I'm busting my ass to get a job, but haven't had one interview out of probably 30 applications. Well, I guess that's not true. I had one interview, and it went very well, and I didn't get the job. So I'm running out of money, using up the last of my reserve, and found out that my girlfriend that I thought was going to let me live with her has changed her mind, even though she said she wouldn't see me on the streets.

School has started again, and I don't really want to study this subject any more. But I want to finish my Master's, so somehow I've got to force myself. I'm doing well in school, but I can't provide for myself. How in the hell can I turn this around? I'm trying to get in touch with a long ago reference to use for jobs, but he is proving difficult to find. I need his recommendation, even though it was a long time ago. I haven't worked in so long I desperately need the reference, and also my former boss's too, if I can find her. Do you have any idea how many H.C.'s there are in California, much less the New York area? I have to hunt her down and get a recommendation from her as well. I can maybe use a professor for a reference or two, but that is pushing it. Employers want to know how I do on the job, not how I do in school. Two very different things.

So I am distressed, thinking of cutting, trying not to cut, and trying to find a way to avoid these overwhelming feelings until they stop being so overwhelming. I might read a fun book. Anything to get my mind off slicing my arms. DBT says Distract, Soothe, Nurture, and many other things during overwhelming feelings, so that's what I must do.

I met a friend at the airport yesterday who had a 3 hour layover here, and even though we hadn't seen or talked to each other in 20 years, we picked up where we left off, and she invited me to come see her at her house in Washington. I have to remember some of the good things, too. But it is so hard when depression pounds you again and again like a migraine that won't let go. I made myself sick on pretzels for dinner.

And speaking of migraines, I had one of those today too. What a day. I've been nauseated because of the headache, and now I'm nauseated over the pretzels.

But at least I found the tax notice. I had lost that, and I really needed to find it. And I did.

What is blocking me from being successful in life? I am trying so fucking hard.

Self mutilation in one form or another

2005-09-25T19:28:00.000-06:00

Sorry I haven't blogged in so long. I've talked to my T some about the spending, and we've agreed that it relates to my childhood and not getting enough kind words and hugs. We'll talk more on Tuesday about it. In the meantime, I have to face the fact that I have performed another form of self-mutilation by spending all that money. I'm just that much closer to the street. And as my T pointed out, there is the instant exhileration of the buy, followed by disappointment when the feeling quickly evaporates.

Last night I had a nightmare about my mother. Now to preface this, my mother and I have only recently been getting back together after a long split. She facilitated the child abuse my step-father ravished on me. So for years I was furious with her for not protecting me. But last night, I dreamed she told me she was never going to see me again. It upset me, and I awoke in tears. I emailed her and told her, and told her also that I bet she's waited a long time to hear that I missed her and want to see her.

Then in stark contrast, I called my son, and he doesn't want to hear from me. I'm interfering in his spiritual quest. I can't help but feel rejected, but I am trying to prepare myself for not talking to him for several months, since he is going into a Buddhist monastery for an extended retreat at the end of October. But since he's my only child, I feel abandoned.

On the other hand, I have been casually seeing this guy from a mental health online dating service. He's very nice and we enjoy doing things together. But I'm not attracted to him, though he is to me. So I may end that relationship. I don't want to. I'd rather remain friends. But I'm afraid he would always be hoping that it would turn into something more. I can't drag him on like that. It would just hurt him more. But I will really miss doing things with him.

But then school is starting again, and I'm taking a full load, so I won't have time for anything else. And I'm scrambling hard to find a job. Having been sick for 5 years, and unemployed for a year and a half, and not having any good references, my chance of getting a job aren't great, unless maybe I could get a contract job. Assuming I can hold down a job.

I feel unloved, abandoned, unemployable and so undesired.

I have to confess. I pulled out the Exacto knife. It's by my bed. The thoughts of slicing my arms lengthwise have been floating around for weeks. But my T threatened to put me in the state psych ward. I've been taking Percocet regularly. In general, I'm not coping very well in some ways, yet am barreling along in other ways. I am driven to find ajob desperately.

Darkness and desparation - my companion friends.

Might as well be cutting off my arms--buy, buy, buy

2005-09-08T19:00:00.000-06:00

It didn't end with the buying spree on Ebay. Now I've purchased a $1000 digital camera that I can't possibly afford online from a camera store. It started with me selling an old but very valuable camera, with the idea of trading it in for a digital camera that I could use to photograph and resell some items on Ebay. And the starting price was less than the price of my old camera. But that was a stripped camera. Now you have to start adding the accessories, like a battery, battery recharger, memory card, software, cables, etc., etc. and we get to just short of $1000. I put it on my AmEx, so I didn't have a limit, but now I have a horrific bill.

I have been feeling like slicing my forearms again, or killing myself. I was so stupid. I called my therapist, and she asked me why I was doing it, and I didn't have a reason that satisfied her. I told her I grew up in money and am used to being able to have just about anything I wanted. Now I'm in poverty, can't get a job (although I am really trying), can't get on Medicaid, and I'm spending my medication money and rent on a fucking digital camera. I had a suggestion to reject the package when it arrives (it hasn't yet) and return to sender. They will charge a 15% restocking fee (what a rip off). But that's cheaper than a thousand dollars.

How can I possibly be in this bad of a state financially and be so stupid as to ring up $1800 on my credit cards? It has to be a way of trying to hurt myself. Or maybe my therapist thinks I'm feeling lonely. But those don't seem to get at the heart of it. But it is definitely a form of self-harm. I know that it is a symptom of BPD, but I'm not running around screwing every guy I meet, and that's also one of the symptoms. It's impulsivity gone wild. Compulsivity. And it's killing me.

So why should I not cut myself? Why should I not rip my arms up and down and just bleeding for a while? Or even kill myself? I'm doing it anyway. It's cheaper to cut your arms than to buy a nice digital camera.

How can this stop? This is not the first time. It's got to stop, but I don't know how. And FYI, I'm not into 12 step groups.

I should be meditating, but I'm not. It would help I'm sure if I turned to my own spirituality, Buddhism. I need to do that. Why is it that we don't turn to our spiritual heritage when we most need to?

Killing myself: Which way?

2005-08-26T19:03:00.000-06:00

I'm doing it again. I'm buying things on eBay. Things I don't need. Things I can't afford. Things that I'll have to do without--like meds and food.

What is the difference between me stabbing myself now, or killing myself by getting thrown onto the street? I'm killing myself either way. I'd never survive on the street.

I am spending time on eBay instead of studying for my exam on Monday. It is consuming my life. I guess that was a pun there...

I called the hotline, and they said go to debtorsanonymous.org, which I did, and I certainly fit the bill. But one of the symptoms of BPD is compulsive spending. So I'm assuming it's a part of my disease.

I hate the place where I've gotten myself to. I didn't tell them at the hotline that I was still considering cutting my forearms up and down. That's a good way to die, by the way. Really hard to stop the bleeding. She asked if I was safe and I said yes, and we talked about the spending. But I'm critically low on funds. This is just another form of suicide--financial suicide.

I don't know what I'm going to do. I'm having a panic attack. I'm trying to study, but there is so much information to go over that I don't know yet. Time is running out. The pressure of it all is overwhelming. And yet I refuse to go to a hospital. Talk about spending money! I'd never be able to pay it off. And I don't have insurance and am not covered by Medicaid.

I don't know what the hell to do. Maybe I'll just turn off my computer and try to stay away from it tonight. I'll have to deal with the prospects of winning all those things when the time comes. Cameras, software. Along with this week's watches. What the fuck am I doing to myself? I haven't had the opportunity to talk to my T about my compulsive spending yet. I see her on Tuesday if I can last til then. How destructive can I possibly be to myself. And cutting might help. But I'm not into the slash your wrists kind of cuts. I'm talking about deep bloody, need to go to the hospital cuts, cuts that could threaten my life.

I just don't know what I'm going to do. Maybe the hell with it all. I can't talk to my son, because he doesn't want family influence, and I can't talk to my family because, they are family after all. I don't have a friend I can talk to about this. I'm stuck. It's just me and my place. My dogs may keep me alive because I don't want anything to happen to them. So what the fuck? I'm losing it. I can't keep myself together.

Fucked up & suicidal

2005-08-24T14:23:00.000-06:00

Where to begin? I didn't get the job that I was hoping for, and it has had a bigger impact on me than I would have thought. From dreams of the type of life it could lead to (quite comfortable) to thoughts of the life I used to have (also quite comfortable)--it all contrasted with the hand to mouth existence I now lead. And for some reason, I got to thinking about the time when my first ex-husband went out and bought a TAG Heuer watch -- on the scale of a Rolex -- and how I had wanted one so much at the time, but he had given me jewelry instead. So from there, I kept obsessing about a TAG Heuer watch, and finally, I thought about eBay. So just out of curiosity, I logged in and looked at their watches.

The long and short of it is that these things sparkled and shined and attracted me like shiny objects to a crow. I was obsessed. I watched it day and night for 48 hours. I ended up bidding on FOUR watches, and WON THREE. Two were expensive, one was relatively inexpensive. I paid for 2 of the 3 with my credit card -- how I'm going to pay that off I'll never know--and decided to refuse to pay for the third. So that will give me a bad reputation on eBay, and I won't be able to resell my watches there.

I need that money for my non-psych meds, for clothes that I desparately need, for food, for rent, for fixing my car, for taking my poor sick dog to the vet. I didn't need to spend it on a watch of ANY sort, much less TWO watches. It's a lot of money.

So in the last 24 hours I have been thinking about slitting my forearms lengthwise. The only thing that is stopping me so far is the thought of hospital bills for the stiches, and I'd need a lot of them. And I feel like stabbing myself in the chest.

I keep holding my knee to my chest and rocking back and forth on my bed, singing nonsense words. I am trying to soothe myself ala DBT, but it's not working. I need to be concentrating on studying on my National Phlebotomy Exam for this Monday, but I am so distracted. I keep wanting to stab myself.

Fortunately, for the last several months I have deliberately not sharpened any of my knives, and they're all quite dull. I just didn't trust myself. I am managing not to go sharpen any so far.

I missed DBT yesterday because my thoughts were on the watches and my depression/self-harm/suicidal thoughts. And so I missed a chance to see my T. I called the hotline last night, then talked to Polar Bear online, and somehow made it through the night. Today I've called my T and left a message for her, but haven't heard back from her yet.

What an idiot I am! How many arms do I have? How many watches do I need? The answer to that one is that I have one that is working perfectly fine. It's just not great looking. How stupid can you get? When money is so tight and jobs are scarce, what in the hell am I doing being so compulsive as to buy things I don't need? I know I have done this in the past, and I believe it fits one of the symptoms of BPD. But that doesn't change the fact that it is a damaging thing that I have done. So now I go without ulcer medication?

I've lost my appetite, which is unusual for me. I'm barely eating anything. I eat one very small, very lean meal a day. It's just enough to keep me going. And I'm losing weight (which I'm happy about), but I don't know if this is because of the depression or if it's because of getting off of meds that cause weight gain. Or both.

So I am an idiot. Now I'm in a nightmare of self-harming thoughts that are obsessing me just like the watches did. And my self-esteem is in the gutter. I'm having panic attacks. But most of all, I feel like getting a sharp knife out and at least slicing an arm, if not worse. I'm really trying DBT but it's not working. If only I could talk to my T. Paralysis of the brain.

I didn't get the job I wanted

2005-08-17T20:51:00.000-06:00

Pain. Shock. Grief. Sorrow. And goddamn it, asking why! I hate asking why. I don't believe in asking why. And yet I've been asking why didn't they choose me? I had the qualifications. They told me they knew I could do the job. It was just a meet and greet. Like a formality. But they chose someone else.

They asked me if I wanted to be considered for another position too, and I said yes, but maybe I should have said only if it doesn't kick me out of the running for this position.

I cut myself this evening. That didn't help.

So now I've taken an extra Xanax and 2 extra strong Percocets. I plan to take a sleeping pill too. I'm just trying to knock myself out, so I don't do anything else stupid.

It hurts so bad. I had dreams for this positions. Expectations. Never have expectations! Never! And I thought I was going to be able to move onto my PhD. And I thought I could grow with the company. I thought I could take care of myself from now on. Well a lousy job I'm doing of it. Am I going to end up on the street? I could you know.

Now I may have to end up living with a girlfriend out of her kindness and generosity. I'm running out of money. My life is going to end as I know it. I can't go to school if I live in my car. It's an online school.

I'm going to have to take money out of my last little nest egg. There's not much in there, and with the taxes and penalities, I'm going to lose a lot of it anyway.

What happened to my self esteem that seemed so strong just yesterday? I was sure I'd get the job. I was sure I could support myself. I was sure I could continue with my education. Now I can't even take my dog, who has a badly infected ear, to the vet, because it's just too expensive. That's cruel. Maybe a vet would consider treating her for no cost because I'm unemployed and have been for so long.

My grandmother's youngest sister died today. She was 104 years old. She died peacefully in her sleep. She had a long, good life. I want a long, good life.

My only son won't even talk to me anymore, and he is doubtful he'll have children. Of course he's young yet, but not wanting children is pretty radical. And he doesn't want me contacting him until further notice.

How can I turn this around? How can I get back the confidence that I'll be able to take care of myself? How can I get back the feeling that I don't need a man to survive, even though one might be nice as a partner?

I'd slit my throat if only I was brave enough, and had a sharp enough knife.

I'm devastated. How can I turn this around for the better?

Percocet's kicking in. I'll go take the sleeping pill and deal with it tomorrow. And I have to go see my stupid p-doc tomorrow, and lie about how much Xanax I've been taking. All so I can get free drugs. I had it planned out. I was going to get enough free drugs to last until they put me on fulltime with the company.

I don't know how I'm going to make it, but I want to thrive. Is there anything wrong with that? But how to get from utter despair to confidence? I'm doing well in school. Maybe I should take 2 courses ( a graduate full load) this next term in order to getit out of the way faster.

The percocet is kicking in. I'll try to go to bed now. I can't even consentrate on Harry Potter...

PANIC ATTACK! Help!

2005-08-11T14:53:00.000-06:00

I am having a major panic attack. This is despite 3 mg of Xanax and self-soothing exercises like rocking myself and curling up in bed and hugging a pillow. I am behind in school and just can't concentrate enough to be able to do my homework.

I know what it's all about. It's the possibility of the Training Content Specialist job that I might hear about tomorrow. What if they don't contact me tomorrow? What if they wait over the weekend? Am I going to continue to freak out if that happens?

I've called my T but she hasn't called me back yet. I don't know what to do. I don't think I'm trying enough DBT skills, but I am having a hard time concentrating on them, too.

I am afraid of not getting the job. I'm desparately low on funds, and I really need to start soon -- like Monday! But in the meantime, I need to do my schoolwork, and my mind is all over the place.

I HATE PANIC ATTACKS! My resperation/heart rate is increased, I keep hugging myself and singing a nonsense made up song, and I keep taking meds thinking they'll help, but they don't.

I can hardly concentrate enough to write this post. What if I don't get it? I will be up shit creek, that's for sure. But talk about last minute timing! And the thing is, even though it doesn't pay very well, it pays better than nothing, and it is enough to keep me afloat for a while. Plus I really think I'd like the job. And I really like the company. They said that I am obviously qualified for the position. But what if they think I'm over-qualified?

The thing about a panic attack is it blows up your brain until thinking becomes virtually impossible. I'm paralyzed with a totally irrational and overwhelming fear. I am almost numb, or I should say my brain is almost numb. I can hardly sit still. I've had thoughts of self-harm as if stabbing myself would relieve the pain of the fear. So far I've managed to put those aside. I've been pretty good in the last couple of months of looking past self-harming thoughts.

But I've also got to take a driving school online because of a fender bender I had, and I have signed up for the National Phlebotomy Exam, which I haven't studied a lick for. I'm thinking about trying to postpone that one, though I'll bet the school takes my money and runs. Should I even be worrying about taking the National P Exam? If I get this job, it will be in my Master's field, and that will be more valuable and pay at least a little better than phlebotomy, which was supposed to get me through graduate school. I just never thought that I might actually have the opportunity for getting a job in my field before I graduate.

In an attempt to distract myself, I looked up my planned course schedule, and see now that I won't graduate until at least Dec. 2006, and that is if I don't take off any more time.

I don't want to wreck my GPA by a stupid panic attack. What if I get the job and get a panic attack at work? Maybe I should have taken the panic class instead of the DBT, except that I feel very at home with the DBT, and the thought of the panic class fired me off into the atmosphere.

How do any of you deal successfully with panic attack? It just totally shreds your life. I can't afford to be incapasitated at work by a panic attack. What am I going to do? Bring my oversize teddy bear to work in case I freak out?

I can't get ahold of anybody for advise/comfort. I am facing this all alone, like I do most times. I feel like screaming, except the neighbors would freak out if I did that. So I don't. What am I going to be like tonight and tomorrow, and maybe the weekend? I didn't sleep well last night again. Got up in the middle of the night, then woke up early. I'd say I'm just a tad bit on the anxious side, wouldn't you?!

I don't think there are drugs strong enough to wipe this out. Maybe I'll try some more Xanax. I know I'm not supposed to take it inbetween doses, but I have to get through this somehow.

Maybe good news and some bad news

2005-08-10T22:33:00.000-06:00

I wrote an entire long post, and it was swallowed by Blogger. I hate that.

To sum, I had an interview on Monday with a company that seemed to know my resume inside out and was convinced that I could do the job. They also said they had two others to interview, but felt they could make a decision by Friday. They also said there was another technical writer position open, and asked if I would like to be considered for that as well. Of course I said yes. It is very exciting to me because I believe I have an opportunity to get the first job, which is a training content specialist, that is in my field of study in my Master's degree. Both jobs will be based in Denver, just 20 minutes away from me. Amazing. Most of my commutes have been an hour each way. There is a good possibility that if I get one or the other, that I can take off on Tuesday afternoons for DBT and seeing my T. They have very flexible hours. So that would be terrific. And the first job is contract until the end of the year, at which time if the budget allows, they will be hiring fulltime. So it is a great opportunity. The downside is that the pay stinks. I tried to renegotiate with the headhunter for a better salary, but she refused, saying I knew the pay when I walked into the situation, and that when it goes full time, I'll have a chance to renegotiate. I don't think I'll get very far, but I can try. And when I finish my degree, I can ask for another pay raise. The important thing is it would get me into the training department, and if an Instructional Design job came open, I would know about it and apply. But the job is very interesting, even if it doesn't pay well. I could learn a lot, and get a lot of good experience.

Plus, now I'm thinking about the possibility of going on to get my PhD, and maybe the company would pay for it. I know that they have a relationship with my university, and the university at least offers a discount because of that. I've wanted to work for this company on and off for my whole life, so this is really a tremendous opportunity. I want a PhD because I want to head up the Training/Instructional Design department, and even go farther. I have never been very ambitious before, but there is something about retirement hanging over my head and me not being financially even close to being ready to deal with it, that makes me motivated to succeed in business like I never have.

I know I will be crushed if I don't get this job. I wasn't when I didn't get the hospital job, but this one is different. It is in my field. It is an opportunity for me to make a come back in my career after all these years of being sick and in bed with BPD and Major Depression. I just need a chance. I am going to be a mess until I hear on Friday, IF I hear on Friday. Waiting the weekend would be torture. I am having a hard time studying as it is.

The other thing I posted about was concerning a phone conversation with my son, where he said he didn't want to hear from any family members indefinitely. He sounded like he was trying to make a decision. But I called him and must have caught him off guard, because he was rude and abrupt and made me cry.

I talked to my T about it on both Monday and Tuesday, and she said to try the DBT skill of Radical Acceptance, and it worked. She reminded me that he has a pattern of calling every couple of months, and that he'd likely continue it.

I corresponded with the Buddhist monastery that he attends, and they said that he wasn't doing well. He wasn't holding down a job, and he was eating an all raw fruit and vegetable (uncooked) diet, and that this was affecting him. They also informed me that he was no longer welcome at the monastery except on Sunday mornings, meaning no weekday meetings and no retreats. So something is going on with him.

I think it is his Asperger's Syndrome at least in part. That form of autism is incidious because although he talks like a professor and is extremely smart, he does not pick up on social cues like facial expressions, body language and tone of voice. So he consequently gets no feedback on his actions, and says and does things that are offensive to others. He is angry also. I don't know if this anger is from his rough childhood or from the Asperger's or both, but it is bothering the monks at the monastery. I've asked the monks to watch over him, and told them about his disability. I've asked them to let the spiritual community know so that they can accept him as he is. The monks asked him to get psychiatric help, and he said he would. But I am suspicious, because unless he clearly said, I will get psychiatric help, he will not do it. He was in the hospital for 15 months as a teen, and he did not get the support he needed, as well as being improperly diagnosed. So although all I can do is advocate for him, at least I can do that much. The rest is up to him. DBT is based out of Zen Buddhism, and although I don't know it would be affective on Asperger's, I can't help but see that it has been good for him.

So I wait. On the job, on my son. And need to focus on homework, but am struggling a bit. Maybe Radical Acceptance will do the trick if I don't get the job.

Self harm

2005-08-07T02:53:00.000-06:00

I want to hurt myself. It is an almost overwhelming urge. I'm not practicing DBT or meditating, and so my sources of comfort are gone.

I don't want to go into the panic group. I want to continue with DBT, and continue seeing my T every other week. If I go to the panic group, I'll see her only once a month.

I am drifting away from sanity. I am not grounded. It feels as if I am being swept away by a flooding, swift water stream. It's deeper, faster, and more dangerous than I previously thought.

I met with the guy fron the mental illness site that lives in Denver. He found out my last name by doing a search on the Internet. I feel very unsafe about this. I shouldn't have given him the title of my book. I don't know how he found me, but he did. I thought I was being careful and concealing my last name. But now he knows both my home phone and cell phone numbers. He wants to come over to my house. I'm in the phone book. He could come over any time.

I don't know why I want to hurt myself, but I do. Maybe it is because of this guy, who has been in residential treatment for depression for years, is now making me feel unsafe. Maybe it is the lack of support I feel with my Aunt moving to Atlanta.

I shall take a sleeping piill and go to bed, hoping that oblivion will take me. This is all wrong. I shouldn't be wanting to hurt myself, and yet it is an urge. May the night take me before I do something stupid.

Wild week

2005-08-06T10:41:00.000-06:00

It's been quite a week. I have been rejected for the part-time hospital job, although this opens up a full-time position, but I'm really not qualified for it. Maybe another part-timer will take it and leave that position open. I interviewed for a Web content editor position with a HR person by phone on Tuesday. If they are going to refer me on to the manager, I'll know next week. And Monday I have an interview for a 4 month contract as a Web writer for Lockheed Martin. It doesn't pay very well, but hell, I'll take anything. And it would be good experience with a good employer. Maybe they'd remember me and hire me for something else. So much for improving my finances. I'm desparate now, and need to find some sort of income.

There is a Panic group starting at the clinic at the exact same time as my DBT group resumes, and I am still torn about taking it. Everybody thinks I should take it. But it's hard, and about half way through you have to start confronting your fears, which doesn't appeal to me at all. I have enough of them; I don't want to scare myself to death. And besides, I think although I do have occassional panic attacks (severe chest pain, etc.), I mostly have anxiety attacks. So I don't know if I want (or even could if I got a job) commit to 16 weeks of confrontational therapy. They say it has a high rate of success IF you finish it. That's a long time to commit to.

And I haven't been practicing either my DBT or my meditation. And of course I'm feeling worse because of both. It's like I need the structure of DBT group and attending the Temple to keep my practice going. If I don't take the DBT group, then I won't see my T but once a month -- clinic rules. That will be especially hard if I am going through a very painful therapy and don't even have my T's support.

I saw my Aunt on Thursday. She is elderly and moving away from Colorado to Atlanta in less than a month. She's the closest family I've got here, and I'll miss her very much. It's probably the last time I'll get to see her. Plus my cousin and his family may be moving back to Oklahoma where there is a job opportunity for him. So it would leave me all alone here in Colorado. No family. Only one good friend who works 2 full time jobs, and so is hard to see.

With my finances shrinking, I don't know whether I should try to stick it out and try to get a job here or not. I heard a report on the news that said the job market was the best it has been for many years, so maybe I shouldn't go. And I am in cheap, tiny apartment that takes pets, and that would be hard to find. The other choice would be to move out to California to be near my son, only there are no jobs where he lives. I am going to take the National Phlebotomy Exam later this month (if I finally study for it), so that would allow me to work in California and other states as a phlebotomist, not just in Colorado.

I've finally caught up in school, though we are supposed to do mid-term self-evaluations. What is the professor's job here, if he doesn't have to comment to our posts, and he doesn't have to evaluate our work? Sounds like he's got an easy job. He just lets the class do it's own thing, and occassionally posts about whether we're on the right track or not. That's WE. Not individual comments. Individual comments are for those who are way off track, not reassurance for those who are on the right track. So you are walking blind all the time.

Emotionally, I still have a lot of problems with anxiety. I am taking meds from my regular doc (Xanax) instead of my pdoc, but not telling my pdoc. I am waiting to get a big shipment of free meds of Abilify, which costs $300/month. That's all by itself. But Abilify seems to be working for me. I am much more stable. I don't know if I can afford to stay on it or not. If I continue without a job, then I will qualify for the free meds (pmeds). But if I get a job, I won't. Ironic isn't it? I try to help myself and am put into the working poor category where I can't qualify for free aid, but can't afford the meds myself. Fortunately, 2 of my 3 pmeds come in generic, even though one is not time released, and so I'll have to remember to take it all day long. When I was taking it that way once, I remembered to take my next pill because I would realize I was getting depressed. What a way to take a pill! Up and down all day. I just love that emotional rollacoaster. All day long, every day.

Sorry I haven't posted. I've been having a very hard time logging onto the site to post, plus my dialup connection keeps quitting on me. Constantly! It really sucks not to be able to have broadband! (It just isn't available in my rural area.) I can't watch videos, have audio or music, play streaming radio, etc. It's a archaic pain in the ass. And here I'm supposed to be a graduate student in online learning. I guess if I ever teach I'll be able to sympathize with my online students if they have dialup.

All in all, I'm doing pretty well, except for not meditating and not practicing DBT. It's got to be the meds. I'm in a terrible place, so it is a welcome change, although I still have anxiety attacks.

I'm meeting a guy in Denver today that I met through an online dating site for the mentally ill. He has major depression and has been hospitalized for it twice. I don't think I'm interested in getting romantically involved, but it would be nice to have a sympathetic friend to do things with on occasion. Got the Pilot kicked off the dating site! So much for mister "I love you and take care of my kids for me." I appreciate all the warning comments. Something just wasn't right about him.

This is getting very long. Thanks for all the support.

Deceiving the P-doc

2005-07-29T20:34:00.000-06:00

I think I have finally made up my mind about what I'm going to do about the p-doc's manipulation to quit Xanax and have free meds, at least until I get a job, or to go with my PCP and let her prescribe the meds, but not have them free (but have Xanax). I called my PCP today and asked her to prescribe a full Rx of Xanax, which she did. And I am not going to tell my p-doc, since I don't trust her. I am going to wait until the rest of my free meds come in (a month), and then go to my PCP for all my meds. In the meantime, I'll pretend to follow the p-doc's recommendations. Deceit.

One problem: One of my meds costs between $275-$310 a MONTH. That's why I'm waiting for a several month free supply to come in. It's worth $1200! I may have to move to another less expensive med, but maybe I'll have a job and can afford it. Who knows.

But I do know that despite their probably good intentions, forcibly manipulating patients to go a certain direction is not the kind of medicine I find to be good. I like a relationship between doc and pt., coming together to find a workable solution for all. Maybe I'm idealistic, but I like the word CHOICE when it comes to medicine and healthcare. These things are what we can do; these we can't. Let's talk about what would be the best solution. But NO, at this government clinic, it is their way or the highway. Perhaps I will get insurance again and can choose my doctor and therapist, not simply be assigned one.

I will be forced to get off of Wellbutrin XL (extended release) and onto its generic, which you have to take many times a day. I've taken it before, and I can always tell when it's time to take another one because I become depressed. With the XL, it's once a day and no depressive episodes during the day.

So I am making a lot of sacrifices in order to stay on Xanax. But anxiety and panic are big factors to me. I am willing to take a next-generation drug that is non-addictive. That would be preferable. But for now, this is what I've got. And until my life stops running on the razor's edge, I will be full of anxiety. I've been under a lot of stress for a very, very long time. Hence the ulcer, migraines, bronchitis, sleep difficuties and other problems. If I go off Xanax, all those other problems will be made worse.

I've made my decision. Now I just hope I get a job. I need one desparately. So it's time to get prepared for the medical battles and changes.

Goodbye, Mr. Pilot, Hello Jobs

2005-07-27T09:13:00.000-06:00

I haven't heard from the pilot in 4 days now. So much for him loving me forever. I am both a little disappointed and relieved. I'm disappointed because the attention was flattering, and he promised an exciting life. But I'm relieved because he didn't want my input on how I felt about the family arrangement thing, and he wouldn't answer difficult questions (he just ignored them). So I think I might have slipped the noose off my neck. All I need is to get into another abusive relationship. If I think dealing with BPD has been hard now, how hard would it be if I was with a "normal" person who gave no support, and even possibly hindered my healing process? Or worse, was abusive on top of it?

The good thing that is happening now is that I am suddenly receiving all sorts of attention from headhunters about jobs in Instructional Design or related fields (the area I'm getting my Master's in). This is very welcome news financially as I am critically low on funds. And as my T says, it's hard to go to DBT or therapy when you're living out of your car. I am hoping that my student loan comes in pretty quickly to buy me a little time for interviewing/getting jobs. There are ways in which I am burying my head in the sand about my financial problems, just blythely rolling along without taking more aggressive steps. I don't know what I'm waiting for. I guess I'm expecting opportunities to fall in my lap, like they have been the last couple of days. That's thanks to an update that I did on Monster.com, I think. But I'm not pursuing jobs for myself, with the exception of hospital jobs. And I'm behind in school, so it's not as if I have all the leisure time in the world.

I guess seeing to my financial security should take preference over dating any time. How can I date if I'm living out of my car? I think I want to be rescued, but after a year and a half of living on my own and eating through my savings, no Knights have appeared on my doorstep, with the exception of the Pilot, and he secretly wore the hangman's hood over his head underneath the shining armor.

Thanks for all the feedback. But a part of me will miss the Pilot. I would have liked to fly over Paris.

The Pilot

2005-07-24T15:27:00.000-06:00

So, I have been on this dating site for the mentally ill, and have been getting all sorts of men interested in me. But the most memorable is certainly going to be the Pilot. He was on the site looking for a shy, supportive, and non-judgmental woman, all of which are things I've written about in my biography. So this guy goes ape over me, and I found myself giving out my chat address. So we've been chatting. He is head over heals in love with me, and this is after less than a week. He thinks god brought us together. He's a Catholic, I'm a Buddhist. He is flying out of London on the London-Paris run regularly. He is a widower who is aggressively looking for a mother for his two children, who live with his brother in Nigeria. He wants One Big Happy Family and to be able to be with his kids (ages 11 and 15). He refuses to answer specific, difficult questions, and has already got his kids calling me "mom" after one week. That is, if he's telling the truth. He wants to take me on a romantic flight across Paris. He has been saving up his time off, and will get 4 months off starting next month sometime. And he wants to bring his kids home to the States, and wants to come back himself. All he needs is the perfect wife and mother to make it all happen. He calls me "my love" after only 6 days of chatting. He's only seen a close-up picture of my face. He doesn't ask about my illness, or how I feel about this happily ever after family arrangement. He just assumes that I'm on board with the whole thing. He does have positive traits, like liking cultural events and dancing, plus being with family and friends. Yesterday, when he was not paying attention to me on the chat board while he was in the pilots' lounge, I decided after 30 minutes of being ignored to cut it off. I was nice about it, but I wasn't going to sit around on my computer waiting for his attention.

So I haven't heard from him today, which is both a relief, and a bit of a stressor. It's flattering to be pursued so aggressively, especially from someone with a career like a pilot or a doctor. But I am also beginning to wonder, as a nurse friend of mine pointed out, if he is an abusive man looking for a weak woman to turn into his nanny. Oh, and I'm 8 years older than he is.

I feel, like I said, both flattered and alarmed. Something just doesn't seem right here. How would any normal man find a "wife and mother" off the internet and be ready to settle down and have a family with her after less than a week? And he hasn't bothered to ask me how I feel about being a mother again. Frankly, I have my reservations. And as a mother, I would have reservations about putting any children with a step-parent who has a mental illness. And why was he on that site? Surely a pilot comes in contact with plenty of women ready to jump into his life?

And yet he is doing his best to sweep me off my feet. Xxan says that I should be looking for a relationship with a healthy man, and that one mental illness in the family is enough. She also points out with grad school, trying to find a job, and having a relationship with my own son seems to be enough for me right now. (I hope I am remembering her words correctly.) And my sister, a retired flight attendant, points out that Mr. Top Gun is a PILOT. And they have womanizing reputations.

Sooo-- I guess I'm stepping back from the pilot. It sure was an interesting ride. And I don't know, maybe I should step away from this mental illness dating site altogether. I've attracted a lot of attention, but maybe it's distracting me from things like DBT, Buddhism, grad school, etc.; in other words, from things that are important to me that help shape who I am. I am definitely running behind in grad school, and this term there is not a "reflection week" that allows us to catch up with studies.

What do you think? Should I dump the Pilot or not? Should I even be pursuing relationships at all right now, much less with the mentally ill, or someone looking for easy prey on such a site? My sister said that we attract people who are at our same level of emotional maturity. I'm just coming out of a divorce and have terrible financial troubles. Which was part of the Pilot's appeal, I have to admit. When you don't know where your money is going to come from, you can't help but be vulnerable to someone who is comfortably well off. But am I, because I am recovering from a painful (yet friendly) divorce, attracting men who are also not in a strong emotional place?

I need feedback, please.

Damned p-doc! Revoke her license!

2005-07-20T19:35:00.000-06:00

I went to the p-doc today dreading the meeting, because my regular doc has been trying to get in touch with her and she won't return phone calls. Considers my reg. doc irrelevant. Irrelevant?! I've been going to my reg. doc for 18 years. She knows me better than anyone. The idea was that the two of them would negotiate about who was going to give me Xanax. Well the p-doc said that if I don't get ALL of my psychiatric meds from her, then she won't treat me, and none of the other p-docs at the clinic will treat me either. That means no more free meds. But she thinks it's a good idea for me to cut down on my Xanax even though I have an ulcer, asthma, high blood pressure, no money, no job, no security. And DBT is supposed to take care of it all?? That's putting an aweful lot of faith in a talk therapy. Not that it isn't beneficial, because it is. It's just not the only answer to anxiety and panic attacks. Crippling panic attacks. I try to do the DBT skills, and eventually they help some, but they don't avoid the situation altogether, or keep the anxiety and panic at bay for long. What about the idea of BOTH therapy and medication? It's alright to do that for depression, but not anxiety/panic?? What sort of cruelty is this?

I came home feeling suicidal. I am trapped between despair and fear and anguish and panic. And then I went to the store and paid $159 for one med! That sure cheered me up.

I was sent to the clinic for advise on p-meds, and now that advise has been given. My antidepressant stayed the same, but they switched antipsychotics. I'm off of one med that caused me severe, crippling memory losses, and another one that was making me fat. They've done what we wanted them to do. Now if I cut the p-docs loose, then will they cut me out of therapy and DBT too? My T advised me to say that I didn't want any change in meds until the two docs had talked, which my p-doc promptly ignored. So even my T is behind me.

This clinic has you by the balls because they know you can't afford your meds and doc visits. So that gives them license to cut out the only anti-anxiety drug that is effective? If there were one like an antidepressant that wasn't addictive, I'd take that instead. WHATEVER WORKS. I'm not picky. I just need help with my anxiety just like I need help with my depression. This is supposed to be a helping profession! At least my reg. doc (who is an internist, btw), can prescribe all those meds for me now. But who's going to pay for them?

What am I going to do??

Biopsy & interview & DBT

2005-07-16T11:31:00.000-06:00

I got my breast biopsy done after having to wait two excruciating weeks to do it, and the results were benign! I really worried about it. So much so that I couldn't concentrate on my grad studies, and was making stupid mistakes and comments. But it is as if a heavy fog has lifted now. Now I can read my text which is relatively simple, but which I couldn't understand for the life of me while I was waiting. Part of the problem with school may be that I laid out a quarter, and so am not in the swing of things yet.

Yesterday I had an interview with a hospital to work as a part-time phlebotomist 20 hours per week. They said that there were lots of opportunities to pick up extra shifts, so maybe I could make it. The hours are terrible -- 4 am to noon, meaning I'll have to get up at 2:30 am to go to work, and I am an evening person. I don't know how this is going to work, but I've got to make it work somehow. I'll have to go to bed before dark (at least in the summer). But they do have prorated benefits for part-time workers, which is good, providing I can afford them. They pay $4/hour extra for the part of the shift between 4-7am, which is a good thing. I think the interview went pretty well, but we'll see. It sounds like a good place to work, with its emphasis on respecting everybody, regardless of their position. They also have supplemental positions open, but that's only sporadic, and I would really rather get a guaranteed 20 hours/week. I'm scared about it, but they know that I'm a new phlebotomist, although with an EMT background.

This week in DBT we are learning about Radical Acceptance, meaning accepting life as it is right now and not fighting against it. So if life is painful, accept the pain and you will avoid the suffering. For me, life is frequently a panic attack, so that means accepting the panic as what exists right now. It has been a very freeing experience, very helpful. We're also learning to half smile, which I have been using to calm me down, and it really works. So it's nice to see the DBT skills working for me. My T says she thinks that since the skills are so similar to the practices of Buddhism, that I am probably using the skills without even thinking about it. That may be true of some skills, but not all.

If I start to work, I don't know if I'll be able to afford to continue with DBT because I will have to pay more, and I won't be able to make my rent as it is. But I guess I will just have to put that aside for now and see what happens. I may not even get the job, even though I think the interview went well. I'm still applying other places. Anything to get a job.

I am still contemplating moving out to California to be near my son and near a Buddhist monastery there that I respect greatly. There was a phlebotomist job open at a small city near the town where I would live. There was also another position open in the Emergency Room that I think I could get, but those jobs will be filled before I can move. For one thing, I have to take the National Phlebotomy Exam to be able to work in California. I'll do that at the end of August, and hopefully I'll have time to study so I can pass it. If I'm working, I will have additional practice for the practical part of the exam (doing a blood draw).

I'm still having urges to cut myself, but I'm simply telling myself that I'm not going to do it, and am using comforting skills to try to make myself feel better. I'm still taking a lot of Xanax (the full dose allowed) and percocet (abusing), which is bad news, but I'm doing the best I can to cope. I'm thinking about asking my regular doc to up my Xanax back to the 4 times a day level, although the pdoc will be opposed to it. To my credit, I am finding that there are times when i use my DBT skills and then don't need the Xanax for a dose, so it's not all bad. But I'm taking the percocet in part to cope, and in part to make me sleepy enough to fall asleep. I could be taking a sleeping pill for that if I could afford it, but I can't. And the extra dose of Xanax at bedtime might help me sleep and cope better, at least until I really get down my DBT skills.

In summary, I am now an advocate for the DBT skills. Especially the coping with extreme emotions skills. They are really helping me not to suffer so much. So all of you who are wondering if DBT works -- it does. I'm not completely out of the woods, but I'm definitely more stable than I have been.

To move or not to move?

2005-07-08T14:51:00.000-06:00

I got a nice offer from my son on Sunday night, suggesting that I move to his area in California. There's a very good Buddhist Monastery there, and I know it would be a key to my spiritual growth. I miss it having visited only once. It made a big impression on me. Now my son is not suggesting that we live together, but that I go and rent a house or apartment. He believes since the area is wholistically oriented, it would be better for me physiologically. He is a proponent of organic foods, goats milk, and yoga. Being a vegetarian and a former yoga student, this would not be a big switch for me. However, the chances of me finding a job to support myself there are not great. Mostly, it has minimum wage jobs. There is a hospital, though small, and I guess a small chance of them needing a phlebotomist. If I were to finish my graduate degree, there is a community college there where I could teach. Not exactly high paying professions, but something.

I have made a list of Pros and Cons of moving there or staying where I am, and the sheet of paper is fairly well balanced, with the Pros of moving column having slightly more items on it than the other categories. I know that there is a likelihood that my son will move on in his life, literally, so it would have to be a situation where I thought I could make it. It would definitely be a healthier environment, and I might get to where I'm not so dependent on many of my meds, including Xanax.

What brought this up was my telling him about my breast biopsy this coming Wednesday. He views how I eat and all the meds I take (a very long list) as being toxins to the body, and that I need to clean out my body and take care of it. I can't argue with him. Pesticides and growth hormones in our food chain are well documented, and I'm sure they are not designed for human health. But that aside, I think, "What if the relaxed environment that I enjoyed there gives way to me not having to take my ulcer medication, or my bronchitis med...? What if I began to feel more normal in a healthier environment?" That's not saying I'll be able to do away with my p-meds, though perhaps eventually I would need less anti-depressant. It would all have to be done very slowly.

But I'm fantasizing here. I guess in order to make a decision, I do have to put myself in my own imaginary shoes there instead of here and compare the two. Shopping would be tougher because it is such a small town with limited stores. I could always drive to a small city 30 minutes away for that, or continue to order things off the internet. I'm not a big shopper anyway. There would be no television, which might force me to do healthier things than flip the remote. I think they have cable, but I couldn't afford it. Have to keep costs to the minimum. I wouldn't have access to a big city with all its amenities. But I'd be in a very spiritually oriented community of many faiths, and I am a spiritual person.

Things don't seem to be working out here. I am down to my last bit of money beyond my small retirement fund, and am going to have to do something anyway. What, I have no idea. I keep hoping phlebotomy jobs will open up, but they are looking for experienced phlebotomists, and I have some but not much experience. So what I looked on as a good way to get me through grad. school is turning out to not be so great.

I'm really getting desperate. I don't know what I'm going to do. My son will not be able to take care of me, and since he has his own mental illness, and tends to push me until I cry, living with him would probably not be a very good idea. Besides, he's a college student and has his own life to live.

The move would be a real strain: on resources, on mental health, on stress levels, on time, on having to pack up again and move. On having to make decisions on if I take all my pets, or find them homes here. I'll definitely take my Australian Shepherd. She is so bonded with me that it would rip her heart out to be separated from me. It would be cruel. My other two animals are not quite in that category, though I love them dearly.

What do you think? If I stay, I can be royally screwed without family around and without a support system (other than my long time regular doc). If I go, I can be royally screwed by having to take jobs stocking shelves in the grocery store, if I am lucky; and still have to tap into my last retirement reserve, though that's likely here as well.

I feel very close to my son, and we talk regularly (once a month) for an hour or more at a time. It's just that we shouldn't live in the same house together. He's the only other Buddhist and vegetarian in the family, so we have a lot in common. I would probably see him regularly enough at the Monastery, so wouldn't need to bother him in his life. But he'd be there. At least for another year or so.

I don't know what to do. Though I'm sorely tempted to go, to begin anew, to go where people think like me, only more so.

Many things to ponder...

Life and Death

2005-07-04T23:18:00.000-06:00

She's alive, at least for the moment. The ironic thing is that my panic about the situation is surfacing now, when I know I don't have to worry for one night -- I think. Two friends in deep pain. And I'm in pain too. I am in danger of sinking myself in an effort to save a drowning friend. And yet I can't not do it.

And I am facing a breast biopsy in about a week. They found something suspicious, and are not waiting around to see what happens, which is good. I like the aggressive approach to cancer prevention. So I not only face my own thoughts of death do to psychological pain, but also am facing the reality that life or death might not be up to me after all. So I'm also scared. And lonely. And thinking about cutting, but I refuse to do it. After all, the docs are going to cut on me. All I can do is meditate sometimes, which helps. And doing breathing exercises. But I also turn to my good old friends Xanax and percocet. I think if I can just get through a few more hours, then it's worth it. They don't take away the pain, just give me something of a vacation from it for a little while. Dangerous fire I'm playing with here. I hope I can learn some better coping skills in DBT. I need all the help I can get.

Life is so fragile.

How to help a friend when they're half a world away?

2005-06-30T19:08:00.000-06:00

As I sit here, my ulcer gnaws at my stomach, because I know my friend is in very serious trouble. We've gotten to know one another on the Internet, but the wonderful anonymity that it offers is also its drawback: I can't contact authorities to let them know she is in danger.

I desparately try to leave messages all over the net for her, but I don't know if she'll look at the net right now. That's simply not in her mind. She's in excruciating pain and can see nothing else. I do all I can do, and it's not enough. And the if's come in: If only I had stayed online when she told me to go do some research, if only I had had the forethought that she was so vulnerable and really needed me, if only... But the if's won't do any good either. All I can say is I've tried what I can try, and just pray that it is enough.

Life is so fragile, such a delicate thing. And when you have additional problems, life makes a person even more vulnerable to the harshnesses that it dishes out. In DBT there is the saying, "It is what it is." I just hope that I can accept that, regardless of the outcome.

2nd post today - sinking into suicidal ideation

2005-06-25T15:48:00.000-06:00

Called the hotline again; this time the guy was less sympathetic and viewed my Xanax as addictive even though I'm taking it as prescribed. He suggested to try DBT skills of mindfulness and breathing, and to break up my day into little events, like walking my dogs or watching tv. He also suggested I call my T on Monday and get a sooner appt. with her. I don't know how I'm going to make it through this weekend. I can't wait to see my dr on Monday. At least she understands where I'm coming from as far as being totally debilitated, in bed, unable to go to the store, etc., as little as two years ago.

Obviously calling the hotline is a gamble: Sometimes you get someone sympathetic, and sometimes you don't. He didn't seem particularly concerned that I was feeling suicidal - a step down from wanting to cut myself. I don't know how I'm going to make it. I have no one to call. Can't get in touch with my T on the weekends. Tried to call a friend but she was on her way to her 2nd job. I don't know what I'm going to do. I'm panicked and thinking about ending it all.

Feeling suicidal & like hurting myself

2005-06-25T10:34:00.000-06:00

Despite the fact that I've talked to my dr's nurse, who was very supportive of me and encouraged me to speak with my dr because of the pdoc's recommendation to reduce Xanax, and despite the fact that I've got an appt with my dr on Monday morning, I'm feeling panicked, chest pains, suicidal, and like hurting myself. I've called the hotline, though I didn't leave my name or personal information, although one of the counselors there said that it would varifiy what a strong reaction I am having against this proposed change and would be part of the record for the pdoc. They are suggesting I put up all knives and sharp objects. I'm just not touching them.

The counsellor suggested I come forth to let the pdoc know of my background where less than 2 years ago I was in bed, couldn't go to the grocery store, took my son with me to the drs offices, and generally just huddled in my corner, and that Xanax has allowed me some freedom to at least try working, even though I still get panicked, try school, and hunt for a job. She said to let my pdoc know that I am not pill seeking but am legitimately afraid of reverting back to the non-functioning way that I was before I was on Xanax. I'm going to tell my dr on Monday about it too.

But I still feel desparate and like hurting myself, if not cutting my throat, because a strong support is going to be yanked out from under me and I will not be able to stand. I've fought so hard to get where I am, that it seems vastly unfair for the pdoc to cut out the Xanax. If there were a safe alternative, like an antipsychotic for instance, that treated panic and anxiety, I'd be all for it, because Xanax wears off and I would like a more long lasting and safe remedy. But there isn't anything that they've developed as a good alternative to it. I am so terrified on things like my externship that my low self-esteem and self-confidence shows through and puts me in a bad light. The same thing happens when I am working for the temporary agency. How am I going to get a job if I am so panicked by the prospect that it shows up in the interview? They don't want people who are unsure of themselves.

I know I need to calm down, but that is so hard even with Xanax because I'm in a perpetual state of panic. It would be much worse without it, though. I'm feeling incompetent and like I'm going to land on the streets without a job. I don't know what to do, because there aren't many phlebotomist positions available. I will call the supervisor where I did my externship on Monday to see if she will consider me for any of their positions open, even part-time.

I am torn apart by fear. And I tend to withdraw into myself when I feel that way, and to not reach out to others. At least I've been calling the hotline. Maybe I should leave my name and my pdoc's name to document what I'm going through. I think I'll do that. She needs to know the trouble she has caused by even suggeting that I go off Xanax against my approval.

I'm trying not to cut or get out a knife that could slit my throat. I'm doing a good job of it. I have been using meditation to try to calm myself, and that has helped some. I'm going to go call the hotline and put it on record what has been happening to myself.

Pdoc, DBT and T - a Rant

2005-06-22T16:07:00.000-06:00

I am furious. My pdoc wants to eliminate my Xanax, after already reducing it from 8 mg to 6 mg. In the meantime, I have occasionally taken some lorazepam as needed to fill in for the missing 2 mg. But I was honest with my pdoc about that and she has planned my decrease to get off the lorazepam. I can handle that. But I am under extreme stress. I had a panic attack when she said that she was going to decrease the Xanax, and my ulcer kicked in with a vengence. I am almost out of money, don't have a job, and don't know how I'm going to survive. I'm worried sick about it most of the time despite doing what I can do to apply for the very few phlebotomy positions available.

So I called my dr and left a message about what the clinic plans to do, and stated my objections to it. I don't know when I'll hear from her, but I hope she will be on my side. I have been with her for about 20 years now, and she has always been very supportive in a variety of ways, so I hope I can count on her now. She sent me to the clinic because the psychotropics were getting way over her head. Now that they have been adjusting my meds, medically I don't need to be there.

However, I am in DBT now until I find a job, and the DBT skills I find are moderately helpful. I need to practice them more and I'm sure I'd get more out of it. I want to continue with DBT, and continue with my T, plus the clinic is giving me free meds now that I am out of work and that is helping tremendously.

I just don't happen to agree with their philosophy, which is cut you off your meds before you even have the DBT skills to try to deal with it. How am I going to deal with constant panic attacks on the job which I've experienced repeatedly in the past? My life is held together by a slender thread as it is. Plus they push you through DBT at double the rate that it is supposed to go (6 months instead of one year). It's like they are doing a crash course in patient therapy which includes minimal to no medications. I just don't buy into that. I want to gain skills in therapy, but I also want the support of my medications, which run the gamut of antidepressants, antipsychotics (going down to one), to the antianxiety drug Xanax. Plus the pdoc doesn't want me taking the sleep med my dr gave me, and I have for years had great difficulty in falling asleep. I easily reverse my hours. So I won't have sleep support, except for an antihistimine that she prescribed. Antihistimines don't put me to sleep. And with lack of sleep comes serious bouts of bronchitis, which has already scarred my lungs.

I know that I am a walking pharmacy, but my life has been hell, to put it lightly, and these pharmaceuticals have gotten me through.

I'm mad as hell that the pdoc is doing this. Has anyone else experienced similar things with their pdocs, and if so, what did you do?

I go to a public clinic, and I really feel like they are trying to run me through the paces to get me off all drugs and buy into their way of thinking. But I'm not a wholistic sort of person. If I were, I would be supporting all the changes, no matter how difficult they might be. But I'm not. I have been a part of the medical community for 12 years now (as an EMT and phlebotomist), and I have great respect for medical doctors. They were the ones that removed my seriously diseased gallbladder that was too big to take out by scope (they had to open me up). They have been treating my migraines for years. I am going to lose some more weight to help prevent me from getting diabetes. I've already lost a ton of weight.

Ok, I'm through now. But I'm still furious.

Overwhelmed and panicked

2005-06-17T22:53:00.000-06:00

This week two big events happened. My computer crashed and so I have been down for the better part of a week. Now I have to reinstall programs, etc. A pain, but doable. I may have to purchase some programs that other people have given me. The biggest problem was being out of touch with everybody. I basically lost a key part of my support group, and that sucked, I'll tell you.

And the other big thing was I went through my externship for phlebotomy. It was hard. I chose to work in a hospital, but I now see I should have taken my instructor's advise and gone to a clinic. Now I think I'll have to arrange for another period of time in a clinic doing sticks, if that's even possible. The hospital part was hard because I was with constantly new instructors (other phlebotomists, mostly) who did things differently from each other, who set up their carts and trays of equipment differently, and who would change at midday when the shift changed. So with all this difference all day every day, it was hard to concentrate on doing my sticking well. I always started off very nervous in the morning, and tended to miss the sticks, but then as the week went on I got better in the afternoons.

But the hardest part was just being with another person all day long who was observing me and commenting (I appreciate the feedback, but still it was overwhelming at times). I had frequent panic attacks. Xanax got me through the week, plus remembering a refuge in the Buddha saying, which helped me calm my breathing down. But mostly I stayed panicked. I was having to pay so much attention to getting my equipment found and set up that I didn't have much attention left over for the actual stick, let alone pay attention to the poor patients, many of whom had been stuck repeatedly and didn't want to see another needle. I can sympathize. Now, that is. I was too panicked to empathize then.

I got through the week, though. I didn't get as many sticks as I should have, because several "helpful" phlebotomists filled in extra sticks on a sign off sheet for me because it is so difficult getting 100 sticks in a hospital. That really worked against me because I didn't get the experience I should have. But I was limited on time and wouldn't have gotten the experience anyway, I guess. I feel bad about it though.

So not being in touch with ppl I care about on the internet and going through a very tough week without support was very hard. It's still hard. I will be glad to see my T on Tuesday.

I don't know how I am actually going to get a job doing this and be able to handle it personally. Maybe after more practice like on the job training I will be able to focus on the patients. Or maybe I'll have to find work at a clinic.

This was way overwhelming for me. But now I've got to find a job. If I can. And yet I don't feel capable of handling it in some ways. I don't know how I am going to make it. Panic!

DBT and honesty

2005-06-07T18:56:00.000-06:00

Today was my first day of DBT. Most of it was introductory. One of the things we have to do everyday is to keep track of our actions (like self-harm), emotions, urges, etc., including self-medicating. The form requires you to rate the urge to self-medicate, then tell how many and what medication you are taking it, whether illegal drugs or over the counter medicine. So here's my problem. You have to give the cards to your therapist who reads this very intimate portrait of your inner life and then evaluates it with you.

I don't know if I'm ready for that level of honesty. I turned in all my needles after self-harming, and that's ok. But since I self-medicate using a prescription drug that could easily be cut off if it is known that I use it for that, I really don't want to be honest about that yet. If I knew it were safe to tell, that my T wouldn't run to my doctors and cut me off, I think I could open up about it and work with her to decrease my self-medication.

But it needs to be safe. When I know I won't be cut off abruptly, then I am willing to be honest about the problem and address it in therapy. But there has to be some trust there. And I wouldn't be as willing to be as forthcoming about other things if the trust was not there. I guess it depends upon my T. Somehow I've got to ask her if she will keep it confidential while we're working on it. I don't know how to ask that and not give away what the problem is. I believe that DBT can help me deal with my urges and the emotions behind them.

It comes down to being scared: Of being honest with myself, with my therapist, and with my DBT group, to the extent that I want to share that with them.

Oh, and the funny thing about today was that there were supposed to be 8 people there and only 2 showed up, including me. So we got pretty closely watched and supervised.

I'm also scared of DBT and the changes it will potentially make in my life, even though I know that they are good changes. Change can be scary. Who knows, if I get a job, I might not even be able to continue to go to it. And that would be scariest of all.

Bad driving

2005-06-04T18:02:00.000-06:00

First I rearend a car while stopped at a stop light and something fell forward. I leaned forward to get it, and my foot must have slipped off the break, because the next thing you know I was in the back of a Subaru.

Then today while I was driving home from a seminar, I was driving up a twisting road up the mountain when I was pulled over. I was doing 64 in a 45 zone. The officer asked me if I knew what he had pulled me over for, and I didn't have a clue. He asked me if I knew what the speed limit was, and I told him I didn't know (which was also true). He let me off with just a warning I'm sure because I still have on my firefighter license plates from when I was on the fire department, plus stickers saying I'm a firefighter and an Emergency Medical Technician. I'm sure it was professional courtesy. But I have been driving so badly in the last year that it has been seriously dangerous. That bad wreck 6 months ago or less. Sliding off the road into the ditch in the winter 3 times. Count them. One, two, three. Borderline Personality Disorder has as one of its symptoms wreckless driving, and I am sure falling into that category in a big way.

And I'm trying to be safe. I probably drive a little fast, but not most of the time. And S suggested that I talk to myself while driving, saying "now I am approaching this sign, now I am turning left" so that I will be more aware of my driving and not space it out. I'm going to hurt or kill somebody at this rate. I'm trying to be aware, slow down, allow for space between me and the next car, etc. etc. But even so, I am getting into bad situations. Anybody else have this problem? Am I suicidal and just don't realize it?

Cutting and needles

2005-06-03T17:09:00.000-06:00

It's been a while since my last blog. In the meantime, I have gone through several bouts of wanting to cut myself, but only actually cut myself once and in a small way. I called the hotline, and they said I should get an emergency appt with my therapist. On the way home from seeing her one day, I hit a car by rearending it when my foot slipped off the brake. Everybody's fine, and only minor damage, but my insurance company is going to hit the roof. This is the second accident in 6 months.

Back to the cutting: I had good reasons to do it sometimes, and lousy reasons to do it other times. I chose a lousy time to actually do it, and I don't know why. It had to do with panicking over jobs that were advertised online for a phlebotomist at the hospital where I am going to do my externship. And I just panicked. But the urges had been so strong all day, that I cut myself. My pdoc told me to bring in all my IV needles to my T, which I wasn't thrilled about doing. But with some encouragement from P, I decided it was the way my T was trying to help me. I even turned in the IV lines that I could use to start an IV on myself if I got sick. So I turned them ALL in. That was a tough one.

I am still self-medicating, and can't bring myself to tell my T yet. I need to get a better handle on it somehow. I don't want to be cut off all of a sudden.

But DBT starts on Tuesday, and we will be dealing with distress tolerance, which I can certainly use right now. I have anxiety and/or panic attacks every day. I've even had serious chest pains, and I'm going to tell my doc about that for my annual physical soon. But I'm sure it's inside, in the painful places of my metaphorical heart, not the muscular pump.

I'm panicked over finances and jobs and DBT. One good thing about DBT is that I will see my T every 2 weeks instead of once every 3-4 weeks. And she is one of the DBT counselors, so I'll see her every week then. I'm afraid that DBT will go too fast for me and that I won't be able to keep up and "get" the ideas they are teaching. And I'm afraid of what it might uncover. I have dark secret things hidden where no one but me can find them, and I don't even want to find them. But I need relief from the pain of everyday life right now, so I may have to peek.

More negative emotions

2005-05-31T17:31:00.000-06:00

I think I'm on a roll. Today I feel overwhelmed with anxiety and panic. It didn't help that I ran out of Xanax, and so had to drive all the way into the city to get some more, only to find that i'd left the script at home! So I drove back home, picked it up, and went back down to the city. This didn't help my anxiety at all. I had other chores planned that will have to be put off until tomorrow. But finally when I got home, I took a Xanax, and at last it's kicking in a little bit.

I don't know if this is the way I should deal with my panic/anxiety or not. Apparently the pdoc thinks so, or she wouldn't prescribe it. I've been thinking about Sid's response to yesterday's post, but some of this DBT stuff is still over my head. Thanks, though, Sid.

Tomorrow is depression group, and we are supposed to be talking about gratitude. I don't know how gratitude relates to anxiety/panic, but I guess I'll find out. We'll also be talking about self-esteem. Finally some positive meetings in a row! The other stuff was a bit heavy and triggered me. My T is going to fix that for future depression groups.

I clearly need help in dealing with strong emotions. They become the focus of my being and everything else revolves around them. I can't always take pills to deal with them. That's not really dealing with them anyway.

I don't know whether or not to start looking for a phlebotomy job, since I haven't completed the externship. I guess so. Never know what's out there til you look. I hate job hunting. I will have to see if the hospitals have their job postings online. That would save a lot of leg work. And I have to write a resume just for phlebotomy. I'm getting my ex to be my reference. He's seen me work phlebotomy before and do it well.

I guess I'll try distraction from my anxiety/panic and see how that works.

Unknown pain

2005-05-30T19:43:00.000-06:00

It aches in my chest as if my heart was tearing apart. I don't know what the pain is. I have meditated in a way that just allows the moment to be what it is and follow my breath. Then I have meditated on allowing the pain to come up and see what it would tell me. But it told me nothing.

Well that's not true. I know it's not because my son didn't call me yesterday when I asked him to. I know it's not the very real anxiety about finances. So I know something of what it's not. So what do you do? Do you force a solution? Offering it a chance to tell me what it was didn't help. Maybe I gave up too soon. I know it's at least partially depression, but more than that. It's blacker than that.

It rips at my soul. How does DBT say to deal with this? My T said that she uses the thought, "It is what it is," when a situation arises that is difficult. She neither calls it bad or good. Just it is what it is. Is acceptance (blind acceptance?) the way through this difficult night? I know one thing. I am committed to learning all that I can from this, because I know it will come up again. Maybe I'll call my T tomorrow and ask her what to do about it.

I've self-medicated, and I'm not proud of that, but it provides me at least a small amount of relief (I didn't take much). I've been cleaning and generally trying to take care of things around the apartment. So I am distracting and creating useful tasks for myself. Is distracting the way to go? Is it the idea that you just get through it however you can?

Anguish comes close to what it is. Anguish with more physical pain. What in the world can I be anguished about?

So many questions, so few answers.

Phlebotomy school finished

2005-05-29T14:31:00.000-06:00

Yesterday was the final exam in my phlebotomy class (blood draw), and I ended up with a good grade. All I have left is the externship, which is essentially an internship, in a hospital for a week drawing blood from 100 people. It will be a good experience. I am hoping to get a job in a hospital instead of a clinic, doctor's office, or blood donation center, since it pays better and has better benefits. Then in July, it's back to graduate school, and hopefully work. I shouldn't have a whole lot of extra time on my hands then, but blood drawing is not a brain drain, so I hope it will leave plenty of mental energy left for school. I am drawing down on my funds something aweful and really need to get a job.

Am wrestling with yet another migraine. To say the things are a pain is putting it lightly. I think it is the relief of stress from studying; stress relief can trigger them, ironically enough.

The Zen Center is closed today so I didn't get a chance to get out. Am hoping that my son will call me today. Next weekend is the day and a half seminar at the Zen Center on the basics of their beliefs. I hope to attend. That will help in getting me out and meeting and talking with new people, which as the hermit I am will be a big help. It's nice that this Buddhist center is closer than the one in Boulder by a half an hour, and the community is smaller and more intimate. I don't know if I'm going to feel comfortable with their beliefs or not. I've never seen my self as a Zen person, but then you never know. Liking the community will play a big role in my decision to attend there.

I don't have anything to study, so I don't know what to do with myself. I may read some on DBT if my head gives me the opportunity.

Threw away pain killlers

2005-05-27T11:21:00.000-06:00

After the urging of Polar Bear, I have thrown away my brand new bottle of 100 pain killers. I get migraines, but haven't been getting them of late, and so have been taking the pain killers to cope with internal pain. I hope I don't drag them out of the trash. I'd flush them down the toilet, except that we are on a septic system and I don't know if it would harm it or not. I still have 12-15 pills left and am planning on using those to taper down, or maybe keep if I have a real migraine. If I kept the 100 pills, they would be gone in 25 days anyway, so I'm just cutting it off a little faster. And there will be nothing for me to do once they are gone. I won't be able to get any more for 1.5 months. So I'm really running down to the bottom anyway. I hope to turn to meditation when the internal pain gets so bad that I want to dope it away.

Wish me luck. This has been going on for several years now, so it's time to stop. Better now when I have some willpower than later when I don't. I don't want my doctors knowing about this if I can help it. Or if they do, I'll just say I noticed me taking them on occasion when I didn't have a headache, and so threw them away. Any way, along with getting rid of the Zyprexa, and tapering down of the Risperdal, this should all be going according to a good plan. Zyprexa was scary to cut down; this will not be scary in the same way, but more desparate. I'll have to get some more Xanax for anxiety and Ambien for sleep. Better those than the percocet.

It seems easy now in the morning to do this, but it will be rough at night. I don't believe in 12-step programs, so that is not a way out for me. I will have to live mindfully. I can do this.

Cutting triggers

2005-05-25T22:07:00.000-06:00

Late last night I got triggered for cutting. I got out a large needle and was planning to hit an artery. But I distracted myself enough that I ended up going to sleep. Told my T today at the depression group. She noticed that I get triggered when I am feeling abandoned. We talked a little while. We're going to work on it in private session. I'm going to call her and see if we can meet more frequently. I think she has the time. I just need to check with her.

The depression group went great this time. She handed out lots of distracting and coping skills worksheets that I could have used last night. She thinks she has had too many heavy topic sessions in a row, and plans to split them up next time she does the group. I'm really glad I got all those handouts. I think I'm going to use them. And a lot of them were from DBT.

Didn't study enough today for my final. Will see my new pdoc first thing in the morning tomorrow, and then I'll study after that. I think I'll do ok on the final. But first I have to get past my pdoc. I have been making med changes according to the plan that the pnurse made up, but they weren't specifically ordered, so I hope she's not mad. It has turned out ok. I guess I will tell her about the cutting incidents. I suppose she needs to know that. But she better not think I'm psychotic for having them. That would really piss me off.

Well, maybe I'll go to bed early, get up for the appt, then hit the books hard. Need to do well on the final. Or at least pass it reasonably. Passing is 85%. Pretty high standards. So I'd like to at least get in the 90's. We'll see. I've not been studying as hard as I should.

Triggered again by depression group homework

2005-05-24T22:13:00.000-06:00

I don't know how I am supposed to progress if I keep getting triggered by doing my depression group homework. When we get triggered, we're supposed to put it down and distract/self-sooth. But then how do I work at my issues? We were given many different behaviors and told to pick one and write the pros and cons of the behavior. I picked co-dependency. It wasn't the most emotionally charged of the topics, but I guess it is too hot for me to handle right now. Maybe I need to pick something very neutral, and go from there. I really feel like drinking now, although there is nothing in the house and I'm not going out. But the desire to obliterate my feelings is there. I feel like the group is going to have nothing to offer me if I can't get through it without getting triggered. I really work best with a therapist on a one-to-one basis, and this clinic is not allowing me to work weekly with a T -- just once every three to four weeks. When I can afford it, I really need to see a T more often. I may ask my T if we can meet more frequently. I don't know if it will help, but it doesn't hurt to ask. I am really bummed.

Free Meds!

2005-05-24T17:51:00.000-06:00

I got a note today from the county that they will provide me with free meds for 4 months, after which I have to requalify. That's great news! I also received another copy of the Medicaid rejection ltr, and they said I was rejected because I wan't receiving any funds from any other approved sources. Isn't that the dog biting its tail? But at least I'm covered now.

Last night, I took my phlebotomy practical and passed. I was so worried the teacher sent me out for a walk. But I did ok. That's down, next the final exam. That's on Saturday, so I may not be blogging much between now and then. I may have an externship lined up for a hospital in middle of June. Still working it out.

Went to my T yesterday and found out I've been accepted into DBT. It starts June 7 and goes for 6 months only, although you can sign up again for another 6 months. They do it with such long sessions -- 2.5 hours at a time. That seems like an awful lot of info to absorb within that time. And I'm worried about how I'm going to keep it up when grad school starts again. One thing for sure -- I won't have time for any night time binges at the bars, not that i do that anyway. But my schedule looks tight -- assuming I get a job. I've heard that hospitals are snatching up people with my experience, so I hope that I'll find a job soon. I desparately need the money.

Well, back to studying. Or maybe a short break, then studying. There is a lot to cover for this final.

Medicaid and free county meds

2005-05-20T17:11:00.000-06:00

Yesterday I increased the amount of Abilify to 10 mg from 5 mg. Both yesterday and today I took the Zyprexa since the last couple of days I've been depressed. But I will completely stop the Zyprexa tomorrow morning. That should give the Abilify time to make a difference. It's a little scary since every decrease in Zyprexa has had major depression, anxiety, and even self harm attached to it, so I am wary.

I got a rejection letter from Medicaid, which is turning out to be a good thing. But I can't find it and I've left a message with my caseworker to see if she can send out a copy of the letter. If she can't, I will have to reapply and maybe be rejected again, and that will take 2 months. I started all of this in March to get free meds from the clinic, but they need proof of rejection from Medicaid in order to put me on their free meds. I had the wrong impression that if Medicaid rejected you then you couldn't get free meds from the drug companies. But it is just the opposite. The meds would be paid for if I were on Medicaid, but if I'm not, the drug companies will give me free meds. I just hope I haven't screwed things up by losing the letter. I can't afford the meds I'm on now. And yet I can't afford not to be on them, either, because the alternative is probably suicide.

I hate the antipsychotics for "stabilizing" my mood, meaning I never feel any joy, although the depression is less and i can function, to a certain extent. Does anybody else have this problem on antipsychotics?

I went to see my aunt and cousin yesterday. It was so nice to be with family, even if I was depressed. My cousin's wife is saying mean things to my aunt, who is elderly -- 81 years old, and that makes me angry. She is also "taking charge" of my aunt's medical situation so much so that the doctors don't even consult my aunt any more. My aunt is planning to move to Georgia (US) in a few months, so I'm going to try to get up and see her once again. She lives 2 hours away, which isn't bad.

I have not been studying for my final, which I plan to work on tonight. I have the practical, where you are graded on the process of drawing someone's blood, and everything has to be in order. That much I can study for, even though it's likely not on the written final, because I will take the practical on Monday evening. A friend of mine with good veins is going to go to the school with me and allow me to draw her blood for the practical. It's really nice of her, especially since she is a Christian Scientist who doesn't follow regular medical practice. She was only concerned about what we would do with her blood, which is throw it away.

I've been digging madly through all the papers on my bed to see if I can find that Medicaid rejection letter, with no success. There are piles of papers scattered all over 2/3 of my queen size bed. I am totally disorganized. But I have been working away at it and am throwing out many things that I don't need to keep. I have to go through this process periodically so that I can actually sleep in my bed. It gets that bad. I am overwhelmed by the task, but have still been working at it little by little. I cleaned out all the papers under my desk last week, so this will be another step to simplifying my life and apartment, and making things more orderly and clean. I have a long way to go, because I have just let things slide for so long. I think it's the depression. The apartment is filthy and in total disarray. Except under my desk, and today, part of the top of my bed. I am determined to get my apartment cleaned up before I start back to grad school in July. I still don't have room to have anybody over. There's really no place to sit, but at least I could let the landlord in and fix some of the things that need fixing. I've been too embarassed to let her come in and fix things.

Back to studying.

Triggered by depression group homework

2005-05-18T20:19:00.000-06:00

I went to my depression group today. We had homework to do for it, and I haven't had the time to do it, so I did one example before class. It was on me not feeling capable of earning my way in the world, and that no one was going to help me if I fail. It triggered me big time. I have been sort of keeping track of my depression and anxiety, and both jumped up high this afternoon. For the next set of homework, my T said that we should choose a topic to work on that wouldn't trigger us. I'm going to definitely need to do that. I came home and took a Xanax for the anxiety, but I'm still left with the depression.

And it is the end of my phlebotomy class and I need to study, but I can't concentrate. It is urgent that I begin studying for both the final exam and the final practical. The final practical is Monday evening, and I really need to know some stuff for that.

I got my TB test read today -- it was negative. I needed it for the phlebotomy class. Now I'm through with all my immunizations.

Fuck this depression. Tomorrow I am going to unofficially increase my Abilify. I haven't decided whether or not to go off the rest of the Zyprexa then, or wait a couple of days for the Abilify to kick in. I have just enough Abilify to last me until next Thursday when I see the new pdoc. I should be off the Zyprexa, down on the Risperdal and up on the Abilify. This is without official approval, but it was the plan that the pnurse had set up, so I'm following it until I see the new pdoc and make a new plan. I'll be out of the Abilify the morning I see the pdoc, so I sure hope they give me samples.

I'm running out of time. I was turned down for medicaid, and I need to reapply, but I can't get the Advocacy group at the clinic to help me fill it out. They are understaffed now. But if I don't apply and get accepted, I won't get the free meds, and I'm running out of money.

I hope I qualify for phlebotomy jobs. This is coming at the same time as a new DBT program is being offered at the clinic, but it is on a Tuesday afternoon from 1:30 to 4 pm. What a time! The goal is to get us functioning in society, isn't it, so why are they putting the time when no one can possibly take off work for that long every week during the middle of the day? It doesn't make sense. They should offer an evening class. They are talking about it, but all they are doing is talking. And then there is the issue of how extremely long the class is - way longer than it should be for DBT, and then the program ends in 6 months instead of a year. That's a lot of information being packed into a short amount of time, and not enough time for practice and getting it down.

I'm going to try to study. I have a doc appt every day next week -- the week before the final. I may try to cancel something.

What can you do for depression to make it better? It is agonizing.

The Zen center & other musings

2005-05-13T18:51:00.000-06:00

I went to the new Zen center last night. It was in a bad part of Denver, but I wanted to go anyway. It was very different -- you might say very Zen. There was a lot of bowing and walking and chanting and sitting (meditating). I still don't know what I think about it in terms of going there instead of going to the Boulder meditation center, which is a lot farther away. There are real differences in style. The Boulder center seems to be more open in a way, although the people at the Zen center were friendly. But the Boulder center is following a half-Buddhist, half-philosophy practice, and the philosophy frequently takes precendence over the Buddhism, and that bothers me a lot. It follows Tibetan Buddhism which I like, when it follows pure Buddhism. But mostly it's a mix. However, I have a wonderful meditation teacher there, and I would hate to give him up. And yet their statue of the Buddha on the main alter is tiny and dwarfed by many other larger images. That kind of tells me where their priorities are.

On the other hand, the Zen center was totally Buddhist oriented. They are strict and austere in their ways while in the main Zendo (meditation hall). But they were quite friendly to me afterward. I was my usual wallflower self and didn't really join in to many conversations. I did make myself talk to a few people, if only a few sentences. My shyness or withdrawnness has got to improve. There's no way I'm going to make friends at either center if I don't talk to people.

So, how do I become more outgoing? I think part of it is a lack of self-confidence. I'm in a very shaky place now financially and career wise, so that has to be playing a part. As a rule, I just stay in my apartment and study, or go work for a temp agency and be a quiet wallflower. I work hard, but I just don't chit chat with other people. I think I'm depressed, too. Yesterday I also went to a health clinic for a check up, and a woman there said, "You look so sad." This is the second time in less than a month that a woman has said that to me. I must really be dragging my mouth on the ground. But I AM sad. I have a lot left to grieve for in my divorce, and my son lives 4 states away. As I said, things revolving around work are in a turmoil, and school is not going so well. I'm doing fine on the one test and homework, but not so good in the practical side of the phlebotomy. Then after this class is over, and I do a week externship, I'll have about a month before graduate school starts again.

Do I have enough money to survive until I get a job? And I could have had a job for 6 weeks doing temp work, but all my therapy and doc appts take out serious time, and companies won't put up with that as frequently as it is. The week after next I have doc appts 4 out of 5 days. It's hard to get a job that way. I don't know what to do about that. I have to at least see my pdoc for meds, but I am having other body work done on me, plus depression group which I made a commitment to, and then therapy once every 3 wks. I don't know where to place my priorities -- on my health, or on my financial survival. Both are critical. What's more, I couldn't survive without my meds -- literally.

Sad and lonely: no job, no friends, no family

2005-05-10T22:05:00.000-06:00

I have been quite down this evening, feeling sad about my son wanting to go off overseas and remain out of contact for two years or so. I don't really have any other family than him, except my mom and my sister, who believe enormously differently than I do in the area of religion, and that colors our relationships. So for all intents and purposes, my family is not very sympathetic to my plight. Think it's god's will or something. I will agree with them there, but that it is my karma that I've built up over my actions over the years that things have come to this. No job. The teacher in the phlebotomy class thinks we're all morons and incapable of being good phlebotomists. That's really encouraging. So finding a job is going to be very difficult. At least I have some experience to fall back on. But then there's grad school, and I'm worried about being able to get a job doing that when I'm done (instructional design for online courses). Everybody is looking for people with experience, and I don't have any, since this is a switch in careers.

I'm running out of money very quickly. I may be denied free meds much longer. I don't know if I can qualify for medicaid, and without that, I can't get my free meds. I have to reapply because they turned me down the first time, although I don't know why.

I was feeling very, very low just a couple of hours ago, but took some additional meds, and feel somewhat better. Am trying not to get to down in the dumps, because my situation is getting desparate, and I don't need to be putting any guilt or shame or fear on me. That's totally unproductive and sends me curling up in a ball on the bed.

I am basically without a support system, and need to create one. But my shyness and withdrawness keep me from reaching out to others. I promised my son I'd go to a new Zen center and try to get to know the people there. I don' t know if I'll have time to do it this week or not, but I want to try to.

I'm basically feeling like crap. It is hard to get up from that kind of feeling. I'm very down on myself, thinking I'm incompetent, thinking I should be more successful by this time in my life than I am. But mental illness has been a real anchor around my neck.

Heard from my son on Mother's Day

2005-05-09T12:29:00.000-06:00

I emailed my son to give me a collect call, then I could call him back on my cell phone weekend minutes. I waited all day until he finally went to his job cleaning a theatre and had a phone to call me with. It was wonderful talking to him. We talked for 3 hours about his school and mine, his work and mine, and various topics in Buddhism. He is much more knowledgeable about Buddhism than I am, so it is good to talk to him about it. I promised him that I would go to a new Zen Buddhist center in Denver because they actually have a monk running it, instead of an all lay community in the Boulder Shambhala Meditation Center. And the Boulder community is only partly Buddhist -- they also follow their founder's ideas about a secular "religion" called Shambhala --one that I've never felt comfortable with. I've gone there for the Buddhism, and have always been uneasy with the other part, as if it were diluting the Buddhist part.

So anyway, I'll try to attend the Zen center's meeting tomorrow night. Tonight, I meet with my meditation instructor in Boulder. He is a very good Tibetan Buddhist, but also follows the Shambhala teachings. I don't know how to tell him that I'm uncomfortable with the Shambhala teachings. I feel a great sense of guilt about all this, as if I'm betraying his trust in some way. I don't want to stop meeting with him for meditation instruction, at least not any time soon. But if I find a fit with the other center, I may have to discontinue our meetings. And I really need the encouragement to continue to meditate and to practice mindfulness, a DBT skill that was drawn from Zen.

I am panicking about money some more. I don't know what I'm going to do, and I'm afraid that I'm going to run out without getting a job either in phlebotomy or in instructional design, my master's topic. And I have dr appts that interfere with working a regular M-F 8 - 5 job, which interferes with me getting temporary positions. It' s hard for me to decide if I need to discontinue with the group meetings and other therapy related appts, or to continue with them but not have a job. Panic is the word of not just the day, but of the year.

My mom called while I was talking with my son, and I cut her conversation short. She was calling from some place in Canada to wish me (and her) a happy mother's day. Her cell phone doesn't work, but she stops some place where she can place a call. She said she'd call me back later in the week.

My son talked about going overseas and teaching English as a second language. He wants to go to Japan, where they pay well and provide housing. You can save a lot of money that way. He thinks I ought to do that too so that I can save up some money. I just don't know what I would do about therapists and pdocs in Japan. I don't know their attitude toward them, but I imagine from what I know of the culture, it probably is viewed as shameful. My son talked about joining a Zen community over there and establishing a "family." He also said it would give him a chance to travel to Thailand cheaply. And he's talking still of becoming a monk. He says he doesn't know if he should have kids or not. And I'm definitely getting the idea that I will not be able to count on him as I get older. That's scary. And he wants to "cut the ties" with friends and family for a couple of years and just be on his own. That depresses me. But there again, it may be his Asperger's Syndrome kicking in. Someone with AS is not going to be sensitive to someone else's needs. Quite the opposite: They are blind to it. I understand that, but accepting the reality of it is something else, especially given my sensitivity to abandonment.

I guess he's right about me finding a Buddhist community that I feel comfortable in. I really do need to reach out to others, especially seeing that I can't depend on him. I guess a mother shouldn't be the one depending on the child, but I have no one else to turn to. And yet he really isn't an alternative. I need to talk to my t about this. I have dependency issues. I either need a spouse or a grown child or some relative to be there for me.

And I have to remember that my son was wanting to do landscape architecture just a couple of weeks ago as a major, and before that it was engineering. So there's no reason to believe that he's going to settle on TESL. He'll no doubt change his mind again.

I posted a profile on a dating site for those with mental illnesses, and have gotten two hits already, with 3 others expressing interest in me. I don't know if this is the way to go or not. All the people they've matched me up with live at the far ends of the country. Denver is central to just about everywhere. So anyway this one guy has a PhD and post-doc degrees and is really cute, but he left out his dx and other important details about himself. I was too open in my profile, but maybe he will tell me about himself. He lives in California. I don't even know if I should be doing this now, because I have yet to get over my divorce. It's probably too early, but I figure the worst that could happen is that we exchange a few emails and then agree to part ways. Pen-pal is one of the categories that we both checked, as well as serious relationship and everything in between.

Abilify is working, although I think I need a higher dose. I'll see my new pdoc in a couple of weeks. We can plan to do what is best from there. I can't wait to get off of Zyprexa completely, and to probably reduce/eliminate Risperdal too. I hope my final approval for Patient Assistance meds comes through quickly so that I'll be receiving my meds for at least a few months more, until maybe I get a job and can afford to pay for them. They were waiting for information from my student loans, which I live off in part. I don't know if that will bump me out of the picture or not. I'll call today.

That's all for now.

Therapist to the rescue!

2005-05-06T17:44:00.000-06:00

Late last night I left a message on my T's phone telling her about the conversation I had with my pnurse yesterday evening. My pnurse basically said she was going to continue to jump down my throat if I told her of si/su urges. That's dangerous. She also blocked me from talking to her supervising pdoc. So I told my T, and lo and behold, this morning she arranged a meeting with another Pdoc at the office. Thank goodness! I hope that I can talk with this pdoc about my symptoms without her flipping out.

I'm reading I Hate You Don't Leave Me. I don't know how well I fit what I read. At one time I would have said it nailed me right on, but I've been through a lot of therapy, and resolved a lot of issues. I'll keep my BPD dx because I want to get into DBT. I've read the VA's page on Complex PTSD, which I fit to a T, including self harm. So I'm wondering if I have that. DBT is apparently effective with it as well. But since the DSM IV doesn't list it (it will be in the DSM V whenever it comes out), and since I want DBT, I won't put up a fuss about the details of a dx. Who knows? I could have them both.

Pnurse says I'm psychotic for si!

2005-05-04T18:33:00.000-06:00

I am angry, sad, and amused that my pnurse reacted that way to the news about my si. Last time I'll tell her. Saw my t after, and she says she doesn't believe that cutting is psychotic at all, and that the pnurse can have her opinion. I'll talk to my t if it becomes an issue again, but my pnurse is making radical changes. Changes that I'm uncomfortable with. She's simultaneously reducing 3 meds and adding a small amount of Abilify to counteract it. I can't believe it. 3 medications at once! And she even commented on how sensitive I am to medication. I think I'm going to call her tomorrow and tell her I'm not comfortable with all the changes all at once. I'm not very comfortable with her anyway. She doesn't even have her DEA license yet! There is a pdoc there and I guess I could request to see him instead. She even told me that she had consulted him about my case. Well, maybe I should go straight to the horse's mouth. I am very nervous about all these changes, and if they trigger si, I'm going to freak. So the reductions include going down to the suicidal level of Zyprexa (2.5 mg/day), down from 5 to 3 mg of Risperdal, and going from 60 to 40 mg of Ritalin (for my ADD). Unbelievable. And I'm just supposed to take that? She's lost my trust, and that's a bad thing. Now I'm angry. She is screwing around with my brain chemistry as if she is throwing in ingredients for a cake and mixing it all together. Since she has one month experience as a pnurse, I think I'm going to request a change. She certainly doesn't listen. I'm going to call them tomorrow and make an appointment to see the pdoc instead. I've got enough Risperdal to last a few weeks at the old level, and I may want to keep it there while the other changes are going on. Unbelievable. She shouldn't have her license. Her plans for me could easily trigger either si or su. This when I'm fighting depression every day. I'm mad as hell that she's treating me this way.

Anybody agree?

Panic & depression over lack of money

2005-05-03T19:58:00.000-06:00

I've been paying bills today and am not sure if I can make it through to getting a phlebotomy job, and I'm not sure I'll make enough doing that to pay my bills. I'll start a new grad term in July, and will get some money back from student loans. I still don't know if it will be enough. If I work two jobs, I can't go to grad school, and then I'll have to start paying off the loans and won't be receiving any more money. I'm panicked, depressed and worried. I don't know what I'm going to do. My funds are running low. With all the doc appts it's hard to get a temp job. I just don't know what I'm going to do...

Depressed, but not si

2005-05-02T20:30:00.000-06:00

I have been feeling very depressed today. I was supposed to see my p-nurse today, but they messed up the appt. so I will see her on Wed. right after I see my T. After that is the depression group. But so much for agendas.

I took a lower dosage of Zyprexa today, so it is possible that that is affecting me. But I wanted desperately to hurt myself last night, but thanks to emails with Polar Bear, I was able to hold off. We emailed back and forth for a couple of hours, despite the time differences. Today I just feel very depressed. I don't know what to do to get through this. Last night while I was battling the si, I called the hotline -- AND I WAS PUT ON HOLD! That's like calling 911 and getting put on hold. I urgently needed to speak with someone, but not "our next available counselor will be with you as soon as possible." What am I supposed to do? They didn't even have elevator music on, but an annoying clicking sound followed by a repeat of their "you're on hold" message. I waited a couple of minutes and then hung up. I was disgusted. However, they might not be as busy tonight, but then I don't feel like cutting myself now. I'm just not motivated to study, and there's nothing good on tv, and I'm not in the middle of a good book. So all I have is time to feel how lousy my life is, how I'm running out of money, how much I want to be able to move on from my divorce and get interested in other men. But I'm pretty shy right now. No, that's not the right word. I'm withdrawn. I don't have the energy for another relationship now. And I'm worried that because of my student loan, they will turn me down for free meds at the clinic.

I don't know what to do with myself. I'm questioning now if I should go all the way off Zyprexa or not. I guess I'll ask the pnurse on Wed what she thinks I should do, now that there was an S/I incident and a night where I came very close to it again, all in one week. This unnerves me. Will these urges continue?

I meditated today and did a yoga workout from a DVD, but still I didn't feel good. I mean I felt good when I was doing the meditating and the yoga, but not after. Or at least the depression rolled in soon after I was done. I won't whine any more, but being depressed with nothing to do is a bad combo. It can lead to all sorts of thoughts, probably not good.

Feeling like cutting again

2005-05-01T16:55:00.000-06:00

I don't know why, but I am feeling like cutting myself again. It is an urge that has been getting stronger all day. It didn't help to read the cutting incidents on the Sanctuary bb. I'm going to have to stay out of the trigger areas until I can get beyond this phase... Thinking about calling the hotline again, although I don't know what they can do or say that I don't already know.

Fucking BPD.

Chickened out on Zyprexa decrease

2005-05-01T14:06:00.000-06:00

I just couldn't continue to take the lower dose of Zyprexa this morning. I see my psych nurse prescriber tomorrow, and I'll talk to her about it. There seems to be a definite correlation between my depression and the days that I take the lower amount, although I've been depressed on days when I took the higher amount, too. This next step is just scary because I was having aggressive thoughts of slitting my throat at this next level, and it was a very frightening time.

My ex owes me a lot of money for me fronting it for the IRS tax return. He is buying a house (the asshole) with his share of the money we got from the sale of the house, whereas I am living off of it and it's shrinking fast. I hope I have enough money to make it to getting a phlebotomy job. Then I'll start grad school again and live off some of the loan money to make up the difference. I'm going to owe a shitload of money for my graduate expenses. I'm financially going to be coming out of school in a big debt. Oh, well. I can't worry about that today. The rent is due and I will not have much left over after that. I'm not working and going to school, as Billy thinks. I'm just going to school, although I am doing a little part-time work. It is nearly overwhelming. Today I will try to get my friend to donate her veins for the phlebotomy final, study the depression group homework, and otherwise try to take the day off. I see my t on Wednesday, the same day as the depression group, so this week looks like it will be fairly supportive. If I go down on the Zyprexa, I'll need the support. I'm thinking about going one more week at this level. But we'll see. Like I said, I'm at a scary stage.

Just a school day, but little depression

2005-04-30T22:31:00.000-06:00

The depression I've felt about the "event" has slowly lifted. I even thought about what a good job I did in starting that IV on myself with a special needle called a butterfly. We practiced using them in class today, and I got the hard stick and not the "easy" (really it was very, very difficult) stick. So it was almost like the "event" could be viewed as homework.

I'm trying to keep a log of my emotions for my depression group, but am not doing such a great job. It's hard to remember to keep the log at night. It takes less than a minute, so time is not the factor. Just remembering to do it is the challenge.

My parents and my sister and her husband are all away on different trips taking them out of the country, so for 10 days or so I won't have them to talk to. Not that I have been doing much talking with them anyway.

Just mainly studied today. I haven't been meditating, and that's been bothering me. I can't find a Buddhist group I feel comfortable with yet, although I've heard of one that I might investigate. I really felt the most at home with the group that my son is with in California, but I have to be practical and join a community here at home. That links to meditation because a local congregation is essential to encouraging continuing practice. Plus it links to DBT. I think there is an introductory session to the other congregation coming up in the first part of June. I will try to attend that.

I see my psych nurse/prescriber and t this week, in addition to the depression group, which has homework I haven't done yet. So maybe I will have a calm week to come. Maybe I will reduce the Zyprexa another stage, but I have noticed an up and down of depression correlating with the mg dose that I am taking on a particular day (I alternate dosages every other day). So I don't know if I'll go down this week or not. It's partly fear, because the next reduction puts me at the level where I was thinking seriously of suicide. Guess I'll see what I feel like in the morning--if I need to take the larger dose or not.

Pretty low key here after the "event."

Post si

2005-04-28T17:03:00.000-06:00

I'm still feeling depressed about stabbing myself, but I got to talk to my t a little after the depression group, and she reminded me that the thing that triggered me, rejection from my son, was probably due to his Asperger's Syndrome (high functioning autism that gets along poorly with others). She pointed out that it was due to his disability and probably was not intentional, so I don't need to take it personally. I think she's right. But I am so vulnerable to his emotional outbursts at me. And yet I feel so needy for his love and attention. I know I need to let him go and live his life since he's 21.5 years old, but I have no other family now to turn to. My family isn't willing to offer consolation any more since I became a Buddhist. Turned that faucet right off. So I don't really have anyone. I only see my t once every 3-4 weeks because that's all she is available. She works for a government agency, and so has an enormous case load. And yet she remembered me at the depression group (first meeting) and remembered details about me like the Asperger's my son has. That was pretty amazing. And I saw her briefly today when I went to pick up meds. She had asked me to call her this morning to tell her if I did or didn't stab myself last night, so I called and told her I hadn't. She said she left a message for me on my machine. I haven't listened to it yet. That's a lot of attention from somebody I've only seen privately once. I have an appointment with her next Wed. We may have to do DBT privately, but that will really be slow since I don't have weekly appointments with her. Maybe the stabbing incident will motivate her to let me have cancelled appointments, etc.

At least I have meds now; I was running out of some. Tonight is a study night if I can keep myself from watching tv. I do it because I'm lonely and it's nice to hear some voices.

S/I for the first time in 3-4 years

2005-04-27T01:41:00.000-06:00

Well, I did it. I finally cut myself after probably 3-4 years of not doing it. My son told me not to call him at work, and he only has a pager. He also told me not to frequently page him. That, and the loss of my beloved bird sent me over the edge. I even called the hotline and talked to them about it before I did it. We just didn't come up with a plan that I found satisfactory. I didn't want to put ice in my arm pits. I didn't want to light candles (afraid I'd fall asleep and light the place on fire) or take a hot bath with bath salts. So I drew my own blood with a large bore (larger than I needed) needle into a tube. Collected it and everything. It's in the refrigerator. I had to use two tubes because the first was out of vacuum. But the second one wasn't. I stabbed my ankle where nobody could see it. And yet it doesn't seem like it was enough. I didn't get the relief feeling like when I cut with a knife. I've taken 2 percocet to try to knock me out. I already took melatonin for sleep, and I am sleepy, but still on edge. I'll try to go to bed now. I doubt if I can sleep.

My son gave away my parrot

2005-04-26T23:46:00.000-06:00

My son called tonight, and I called him back since he called collect. During December, I flew out to northern California to spend some time with him. At the same time, I brought him his bird, an African Grey parrot. Now he has found a home for the parrot (not his) and is pretty well set in his mind that he will be giving the bird to these people. They are bird people, which is good. But I wanted to have that bird in the family for the rest of my life. I just couldn't keep him here in this tiny apartment. I have too many animals. But this is like a permanent loss. My son talks about my bird's karma, and how I may have an unhealthy attachment to him (the bird), which is all Buddhist speak for "Let him go, Mom." But I'm sad to think of living life without Yako.

My son is an itenerant. He lives in a tent, and is thinking of buying a bigger 30 foot geodesic dome type tent (only heavier duty) and living in it over the winter next year. He is thinking of getting a solar energy panel so he could run computers or other electrical devices off of it. He eats only raw, uncooked fruits, vegetables and grains, which he sprouts. He is supposedly the picture of health and rides his bike everyday every where he goes. He belongs to a health club, where he showers and shaves, and uses a laundromat for his clothes, thank goodness. He really likes living in the forest in Mount Shasta and has a view of two beautiful mountains. He's arranged to go to college this summer. He's going to take outdoor botany. Since he works as a landscaper, this seems appropriate. He plans to go to school full time in the fall, taking basic classes, which will be all he can handle given his disabilities. But he is definitely doing things the unusual way. He is also definitely not turning out anywhere close to what I had imagined, although I'm glad to finally see him go to college. He'll be 22 in September.

I don' t know why I'm so sad. He's always been an oddball. I'm grateful that he is moral and spiritual, and pursuing higher goals. So why am I so sad? I can't really say that I am disappointed in the way he is living, because he is living greenly and healthy and he is making his way in the world, even if it is very unusual. I guess I just wish I had a normal son with normal interests--except that I don't want a normal son with normal interests. I guess I'm getting what I wanted, what I raised him to be. So why am I sad? I guess I want to be normal with a normal family, and I don't have that. He went through his wild and wooly stage, and has settled down and is providing for himself. He doesn't want possessions, so he doesn't need much money.

I just don't get why I am so sad. I'm sure the bird will probably be better off. The people love him and will probably take very good care of him. So he'll have a happy life. I don't know.

And I'm running out of time for studying for this week. I worked a little to day at the Gap (jeans store). That was through the temporary agency. And I'll work Friday too. A little money is better than none. But tomorrow I go to a depression group, and I have to get groceries, and study. Thursday I am driving 4 hours round trip to see my elderly aunt who is moving away soon. I want to see her before she goes. And I'll also see my cousin and his family, who I envy. Then work Friday, and school is on Saturday. So I am going to be running short on study time.

I better end this before I get myself really upset.

Childhood abuse, 2nd post today

2005-04-25T18:46:00.000-06:00

I wasn't raped or sexually abused, but physically and emotionally severely abused by a step-father who was a brillitant psychopath and knew evermore inventive ways to make my life miserable, which he regularly did for 12 years. He hated me from the start. My sister, 8 years older than I am, didn't get the abuse I did. She is a person whom everyone gets along with. I on the other hand got yelled at, abused verbally, hit, and other fun things. I had to set the table ina a precise way with each fork and spoon going inthe "correct" spot and the knife blade edge turned inward to the plate. I used to try to get even with him by always giving him the bad silverware. this went on for probably a year, before he mentioned it, and then I started to give myself all the bad silverware. He was unbelievably cruel. He made every Christmas into a nightmare. We couldn't be kids and rush in to open presents on Christmas morning; we had to wait and get dressed up (for the photos) and sit quietly while one by one each of us opened a gift. And you had to exclaim over it and go on and on even if you hated it, until it was the next person's turn. But the thing I hated most was that he forced me, on pain of hitting me, to give him a kiss and a hug every night., just as if nothing was wrong. He was sucha deviant person. He smiled when he hit me, then gave me the old line about "this hurts me more than it does you." Yeah, right. When we lived in subtropical Houston, he would make me mow the lawn on Saturday afternoon when it was hottest and most humid. And I have a history of fainting from the heat.

I hated him and had fantasies fo killing him. I thought I must be very bad to have those thoughts. All through dinner we had to sit while he bitched about work and how bad it had been and how miserable he was. And we were expected to listen to this monologue all through the meal. Talk about indigestion. And when I began to get impatient and want to be excused from the table so I wouldn't have to listen to him, he began not allowing me to get up from the table for a long time. Then, finally, even though I had finished for 30 minutes, he would let me leave. It was like extra punishment. He was very controlling that way.

He was physically big and packed a whallop when he hit you. He also used to beat my dog full strength until the dog cried and cried. My mother never got another dog after that one died, partly because she just couldn't take his cruelty to it.

He drank himself to sleep in front of the television in his easy chair, and then he went to bed after his "nap" and got up at 5 a.m. I've always been a long sleeper, and he would wake me on 8 am on Saturday morning because I had slept in. I got very sick during this time, developing severe, chronic bronchitis. They didn't take me to the doctor untilthere was already lung damage. But it was caused from stress.

My only outlet was school, and I was a perfectionist there. I'd get in trouble for staying up too late to study for a test or do some homework. I'd even hide in my bathroom and put a towel at the bottom of the closed door so light wouldn't come through and he wouldn't suspect I was studying. One time I came home with a C on my report card. The rest were A's, but there was this one C and all he could do was focus on it, asking me why I didn't get a better grade. It was in Spanish. Spanish and I didn't get along very well. So I told him that I just didn't get it, and that the rest of the grades were A's, so why was he focusing on the C? My sister consistently got C's and D's, but she got along, so they left her alone. Then she went off to college, and we moved from Oklahoma to Houston. So I was all alone in my war with him. Mom would get so upset she would go toher room crying and let him do whatever he wanted with me. If he had been a rapist, he would have raped me. Either I was sick or I was studying. I was always without enough sleep, I found out when I married my second husband, who also has a medical background. I needed much more rest, but they wouldn't let me catch up, so I got sick. That, and I was under a great deal of stress all the time at home. I was the grodery shoopper, cook, dish washer, house maid, ironing lady, clothing cleaner and put away, and straightener of the house before He coame home every night. If I didn't get my chores done, hter'ed be hell to pay. And I kept up an A average in high school too, graduating with honors.

One day when I was about 30, I had all the old memories come rushing back to me one after the other, whole memories, just seconds apart. All I could do was cry. I couldn't even tell my then husband a whole memory because I would be two memories beyond. It went on for two solid hours. I knew that he had been a bastard, but I guess I had repressed the specific memories.

I've been in therapy for PTSD of and on for almost 15 years.

Have any of you been abused as a child? It's common with us BPDs. I don't know why I wrote that. It just came out. And after such a positive day.

Did well on test & other musings

2005-04-25T15:41:00.000-06:00

Sid, you were right. I did surprise myself and do better at the test and the blood draws than I thought I was going to do. On the test, I made a 94%, which was the highest grade in the class! I can't believe it. That was a tough test with so much to memorize. So it just goes to show me that the reduction in the Zyprexa has been worth all the misery it has caused. And that studying your brains out can be a useful thing to do. I'm amazed that I did as well as I did, and surprised that I have the top grade in the class. From the sound of things, a lot of the people in there didn't do very well. They must not have if a 94 was the top grade. That, together with the many good sticks I got on Sunday, have really raised my self-confidence. Maybe I will be able to be a good phlebotomist after all. More importantly, maybe I will be able to get a job that pays a livable wage. All I need to do is to pay my current bills, plus my meds. I have a low rent rate, so food and medicine are the next big items in my budget.

I also balanced my checkbook today. (A very significant and great achievement for me.) I now have almost no money in the account, which is good, because I want to keep my checking acct balance down so I can continue to get at least some of my meds for free. Now all I have to do is to try to line up a job after the school gets out. There is going to be a lot of competion for jobs, because the colleges will have been let out and the hiring may be completed before my school gets out. If I made the highest grade in the class on the test, and I'm doing well on the homework, and if I do reasonably well on the final, plus pass the practicle and the externship, I might come out of this class on top! There are a lot of ifs in that, but now I believe I can do it. That would be yet another thing to put on my chart for my employer. And then I can go back to grad school. I've registered for the summer session in grad school, so I'm going to school whether I have a job or not, but preferably with a job. Maybe I won't need to borrow as much money for school.

Today I both meditated and did a short yoga workout (on DVD). So I am seeming to do better. Now it's like I'm waiting for the other shoe to drop and for everything to come crashing down, at the very least psychologically. The BPD thing.

I called the clinic today to see if I can get a written script for Xanax for 7 mg. total a day. That's a lot, but my anxiety is high since I'm dangling myself over the edge of a cliff financially and practically. I'm just a breath away from being on the street. But I'm also close to being able to make it financially. At least at a basic level. That would be a good thing. And a job at a hospital would mean benefits, so I assume they would pay for most of the cost of my meds. IF, IF, IF. I'm dreaming the present away and living in the future. I could go on, with graduating from grad school and getting a REAL job, one that will allow me to save for "retirement." Meaning when I'm too old to work.

Now I'm really getting ahead of myself. But it is a worry, because I have been drawing down on my savings at an alarming rate, and it took some time to save up that amount in the first place. I'm dreaming. I want the American dream again, to have a house and a husband who I love and who loves me, and a good job that I like and that pays well. That's all. Now what are the odds of that happening at my age? Not good. Especially with BPD. But I'm doing the best I can. I'm just not going to be satisfied with what I get at this rate. I feel that I deserve better than what I'm getting. Don't we all?

Depression after good health fair

2005-04-24T13:16:00.000-06:00

I don't understand it. I was so proud of myself for doing so well at the health fair, and now I'm depressed. It is one of the lower dosage days for Zyprexa, but it hadn't been doing that (depressing me significantly). And I did well on my test yesterday, I think. So what's wrong with me? I don't understand BPD. Are mood swings like this normal? Because, if so, they suck. I know that the Zyprexa helped with mood swings, too, so coming off of it could cause this, I suppose. And coming off it can cause depression.

I'd just like to feel normal for a while. I felt almost normal at the health fair, except I had to keep one eye on the next Xanax dose. I've been up since 5:15, which is extraordinarily early for me. I'm a late sleeper. So maybe I'm tired, too. But this grinding unyielding depression sucks. I feel like going to bed. I guess I could try to take a nap, but I think I'm too wound up for that. Why can't I have one full day of feeling good, or even feeling ordinary, without feeling anxiety/panic or depression? Is there any hope for people with BPD, or is this our lives for the rest of our lives?

The Health Fair--a success!

2005-04-24T10:33:00.000-06:00

Yesterday, I took my midterm exam in phlebotomy, and I can't believe it, but I think I passed it. You have to get an 85% to pass. Tough standards.

Then today, I went to the local health fair (160 locations, hundereds of people at each site) to do blood draws. Thank goodness I had the good fortune of getting two blood draws in class, because it boosted my confidence. I did many, many good sticks (draw blook on first try), but had a few that were hard to stick, so I sent them to the hard to stick table. After my Xanax wore off, about 10 (it started at 7 am) I took a break, but was too anxiety tired to go back and do more. So they thanked me and I went on my way. There were still 50 people or more in line when I left. I can't believe it all came back to me so quickly. I told my supervisor I thought I was doing well, and she said she thought so too. She's also the office manager/school administrator, so her confidence in me matters a lot. She asked me how many sticks I got, but I was so flustered about getting things right that I didn't count. I think they could have counted against my 100 sticks that I have to get before graduating school. Oh well, the experience is what did me good, and I think I'll be more relaxed on my externship.

Now I just have to come down off a coffee/sugar buzz. And a partial excitement/partial anxiety buzz, too. Time to take some deep breaths. Maybe I'll go sit for a while and breathe deeply. Man, I didn't think I was going to be able to do this well this weekend, although I studied 5 hours/day for 7 straight days for the midterm, and I got extra sticking practice in yesterday at the school.

Just shows you what Polar Bear and Sid know that I don't--that I can do these things. I'm a little nervous about the thought of drawing people all day, everyday, but that's tomorrow's worry.

I also got an invite to join a DBT class. Unfortunately it's at 1:30 pm and starts in June. It is paired with individual DBT therapy. I don't know what I'm going to do. I have to take a job that's offered me, but I desparately need DBT skills too. I guess I can fill out the application first and see what's going on when the time rolls around.

I hope I can land a hospital job. There's is more interesting because you have all kinds of complicating situations, poor light, IV's, blood pressure cuffs, elderly, children, etc. A lot more interesting than working in a lab where all you do is stand there and draw people all day. This too is something that I don't need to think about right now. I'm just jazzed up.

Suzanne